Crimes Against Women: Proceedings of the International Tribunal [English Language ed.] 0960362851, 9780960362851

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Crimes Against Women: Proceedings of the International Tribunal

EX LIBRIS PACE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW

WHITE PLAINS, NEW YORK

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Crimes Against Women: Proceedings of the International Tribunal

Compiled and edited by

Diana E. H. Russell Nicole Van de Ven

FROG IN THE WELL 430 Oakdale Road East Palo Alto, CA 94303

1984

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Cover design by Brenton Beck Bangalore.

Copyright © 1976 by Diana E. H. and Nicole Van de Ven

Frog In the Well

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430 Oakdale Road

3b64, IS 3

East Palo Alto, CA 94303

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No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise copied for public or private use without the written permission of the publisher.

First published by Les Femmes,

November 1976

Made in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women, 1976. Crimes against women.

1. Women—Crimes against—Congresses. D.E.H. II. Ven, Nicole van de. III. HV6250.4.W65157 1976 364

Brussels,

i. Russell, Title. 76-25356

ISBN: 0-9603628-5-1

(The appehdices that appeared in the original edition have been omitted from this edition due to lack of space. Copies may be obtained by sending a sase to Frog In The Well, 430 Oakdale Road, East Palo Alto, CA 94303.)

To Lydia Horton and Laura Zelmachild In the hope that this book will be a weapon in our struggle against the oppression of women everywhere.

NEW INTRODUCTION

TO THE REPRINT EDITION

If like millions of others around the world, you have never heard about the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women, you have been

deprived of an important event in the evolution of feminism globally. Independently of governments, political parties, or any other existing institutions, it brought women together from many parts of the world to testify about their experiences of female oppression and violence against women and to denounce the abuse of women in its many forms. Organized on a tiny budget—smaller than the average annual salary of a professor in many countries—it attracted over 2000 women from 40 countries who raised their own money to go to Brussels because they wanted to make women’s voices heard internationally. The women recalled painful memories and shared strategies, they argued over procedures and politics, they laughed and cried and planned for the future. They made history. Yet, today, a mere eight years later, many feminists throughout the world have never heard about the tribunal. This conference which demonstrated the strength of feminism as an independent idea and movement and sparked the organizing of numerous women’s projects is in danger of being lost from our collective memory. Precisely because it was independent of governments, it has been ignored by most of them, and many national accounts of the development of the women’s movement do not include this ground- breaking event. Thus is history shaped and our heritage denied to us—even in our life times. Unless, that is, we write it ourselves. Feminists must make a conscious effort to record and analyze the events that have shaped our movement, particularly those that were activist oriented and did not depend on official sanctions for their survival. The International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women was such an event. I welcome the re-publication of its proceedings as important for that as well as other reasons. This book records in painstaking detail not only the testimonies and proposals from the Tribunal itself but also the process of organizing it and the controversies that emerged during the sessions. It is thus several books in one: it is a moving statement of the terrible abuses against women in many parts of the world; it is a compendium of women’s initiatives and strategies to fight those crimes; and it is an organizers’ account of the issues involved in putting together such an event internationally. TOWARD GLOBAL FEMINISM In re-reading the testimonies of crimes against women included in

this book,.I was struck by their timeliness. Unfortunately, most of this testimony could have been given this morning. In the years since the Tribunal, few of these crimes have diminished or changed significantly. What has changed is what we know about them. Through the work of many women, we know in greater detail about such crimes, and thus, we know that what was denounced so eloquently in Brussels is only

a beginning list of crimes against women committed in the world today. We also know more about the investment that men have in committing such crimes and the lengths to which patriarchal institutions will go to prevent us from eradicating them. Let me illustrate from my work over the past few years of organizing internationally against female sexual slavery, forced prostitution, and trafficking in women. At the Tribunal, there was testimony about

Japan of tours organized for Japanese men to Korea for the sole purpose of prostitution. Today, we know that this phenomenon, called sex tourism, is a vast multi-national business operating in both industralized and developing countries that involves travel agencies, hotels, individual pimps, police and customs officials. It forces women, particularly from the Third World, into prostitution through deceptive advertising and as their only survival option, and it is often promoted by governments as a form of national economic development.' This and other forms of trafficking in women are highly organized, and it is difficult to find victims who have escaped and survived who are willing and able to testify about it publicly. It is a testament to the importance that women accorded the Tribunal that—without resources to assist women or to guarantee them safety after testifying—it was still able to attract so much first hand testimony from women who were often taking great risks. While there is no other collection that better documents the breadth and scope of crimes against women and their everyday character throughout the world, it must be noted that one would have liked to see more testimony from women from Africa, Asia, and Latin America at the Tribunal. I am sure that the organizers shared this desire. In 1976, however, independent women’s movement in most countries in those regions were just beginning to emerge and no doubt most did not have the information or resources to attend. This is perhaps one of the largest problems in organizing global feminist events independently of existing institutions such as governments or universities—women from poorer countries and groups do not usually have the resources to attend such events unless special funds are available. Thus, the Tribunal, unlike U.N. conferences where government money (and control) is committed, was not able to insure a significant Third World presence. This seems too often to be the price women have paid for our independence and is an issue that requires more

attention if we are to create a truely global, yet maintain a truely independent feminist movement. Nevertheless, it is important to add that the testimonies included in the book of women from Third World coun- . tries, while small in number, do foreshadow the issues and concerns that have emerged in the past few years as feminism has grown more visible in those regions. There has been no one independent international feminist event since the Tribunal that has tried to cover so much territory. Appropriately perhaps, most of the international events since then have been more specialized, examining certain issues in depth, such as the International Women’s Health conferences in Europe in 1981 and 1983 sponsored by ISIS and Self-Health Movement of the CAMS (Commission for the Abolition of Sexual Mutiliations) conference in Dakar in 1982, which tackled issues of violence against women. Another important development has been regional conferences, such as the Feminist Encuentro for Latin America and the Caribbean held every two years which covers most of the same topics as the Tribunal but is limited to one region. In these more specialized and regional events, feminists have faced many of the same questions of process and structure and controversies over leadership and politics that arose in Brussels. The discussion of organizing approaches and problems in this book is therefore a valuable resource for anyone putting together a large conference and/or an international gathering. In fact, a book devoted entirely to such organizing efforts is long overdue if we are to learn from each other’s experiences and progress more quickly in our ability to be both more global and more effective in our work. Perhaps the most important reason why we need this book is that the women’s movement in most countries is still much too nationalistic and limited in its knowledge of women’s situations and efforts in other parts of the world. Interest in the variety of women’s experiences and global feminism has grown over the past few years. However, the effects of nationalistic thinking and ethnocentric media still limit our understanding of each other. This book comes out of one of our movement’s earliest attempts to overcome those limitations. It only partially succeeds since it is primarily based on women’s voices in industrialized countries. However it is a very moving start on that path toward global feminism. Global feminism requires in the first instance indigenous movements in various parts of the world that define and develop what feminism means in each local political and cultural context. Fortunately, in the past few years, we have seen an enormous growth in such groups. But global feminism is also about an attitude, a world view, a way of seeing each local setting that takes into account the global implications and inter-relatedness of our lives today. This attitude depends on both the

recognition of the commonality of women’s oppression—that is that women are an oppressed peoples whose condition under patriarchy is similar—and at the same time, an understanding that the forms of that oppression vary considerably according to the particular cultural, economic, political, racial, and geographic circumstances. The Tribunal proceeded from this dual assumption, and thus provides us with much needed data for understanding both of these crucial tenets of global feminism. Another requirement of global feminism is that it take seriously the oppressions of women based on domination by race, class, religion, sexual preference, and nationality. These are not only added onto the oppression of women by sex but shape the very forms by which we experience that oppression. Thus, we cannot simply add up the types of oppression that we suffer one by one as independent factors, but we must develop a feminist analysis of the forms of oppression in their inter-relatedness. To do this, feminism must be seen as about more than just a limited number of so-called ““women’s issues.’’ Feminism is not just a list of concerns—no matter how long the list. Rather, feminism is a perspective on life, on any issue, based on an understanding of the oppression of women and the patriarchal dynamic of domination expressed in sexual politics and also reflected in all the ways that one individual or group is set against another on the basis of differences and domination. We must take our understanding of feminism as a transformational perspective into an analysis of any issues affecting human life—violence and militarism; racism and colonialism; development and poverty; environment and health, etc. Most international women’s events have involved a struggle to establish a core of agreement about how feminism is understood.? Some have broken down over this point by trying to define feminism too narrowly or too nationalistically or by simply becoming too pedantic in their approach. The Tribunal succeeded in this regard by both addressing very specific concerns of women and by taking a broad view of feminism as dealing with the struggle of individual women for control over their lives as well as with the social changes necessary in all institutions that affect women. Thus, it affirmed a transformational view of feminism as a perspective on all issues as reflected in its inclusion of testimony about how crimes against women manifest themselves in the areas of racism and apartheid, of torture and imprisonment, of poverty and migration, as well as in rape, sexuality, and motherhood. Feminism must also struggle to determine what it means to be global in our time. In many ways, nationalism is the ultimate expression of the patriarchal dynamic of domination with its battle by groups for control over each other on the basis of territory. Yet, nationalism has also symbolized the struggle of oppressed peoples against the control

of other nations over them (colonialism and imperialism) and against

the growing global control of us all by transnational corporations. It is in this context that feminists must consider how to move beyond national boundaries. While seeking to be global in our perspectives, we must resist the idea that any of us knows what is best for everyone and work instead toward visions that affirm diversity so long as that diversity is not based on the domination of any person or group. This demands first that we realize that “reality” does not look the same from different frames of reference and therefore the desires of all women will not look identical. This book helps us to understand this better by giving us voices from women in various groups and parts of the world who tell about their view of reality and their visions for change. We need to listen carefully to these women and to many more for it is only on the basis of understanding or diversity that we can hope to shape a global feminist movement. The development of global feminism is not a luxury activity for an elite but a necessity for effective action. It is not about travel and exotic experiences. Global feminism is about learning how our lives are globally inter-related, even in their diversity, because the world that we live in operates and controls us in a global way already. Increasingly local problems are determined by global forces and if we remain ignorant of them, we will not only narrow our visions but also doom feminism to eventual failure. Our movement must be based on specific local issues and grass-roots organizing, but we need to put those activities into a global framework if we are to work effectively to end crimes against women. The proceedings of this Tribunal begin this process by locating very specific personal crimes against individual women within a framework of world wide patterns of female oppression. FROM WOMEN’S BIRTHRITE TO FEMINIST RIGHTS I was not present in Brussels for the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women. I did however participate in a Tribunal held in New York City in February of 1976, one of several local Tribunals in the USA held in preparation for Brussels. I testified there on the crimes of persecution against lesbians. At that time, I emphasized that part of the persecution of lesbians was based precisely on our attempts not to be victims, that is on our refusal to accept patriarchy’s limited definition of and control over our lives. In refusing to accept the self-definition and sexual / emotional expression expected of all women, lesbians— whether consciously or not—are forced to become active in shaping our own lives without the patriarchal society’s approval. Some lesbians remain victims of this persecution and are destroyed by it, but in fighting this victimization, many become self-confident and are able to develop strength in being a self-defined woman rather than a vic-

tim. By whatever means a women does this, I believe that the only hope we have of ending the oppression of all women is in refusing to be defined and limited by our victimization. While engaging in the process of struggle to shape our own lives, we are better able also to challenge

the structures that make women victims. I call then on all women to come together and assert our right to selfdefinition in all areas of our lives and to become actors against patriarchy rather than to acquiesce in society’s tendency to make us victims. If you look at what is said about a woman’s lot in most cultures, it is as if victimization was seen as the inevitable birthrite of woman. It is our feminist right—indeed duty—to challenge and reject this assumption, to shape our own lives, and to put an end to the crimes against women that have so defined our existence for centuries. There is no reason to repeat the litany of crimes against women, to endure the pain and suffering recorded in this book, except as a step toward challenging that victimization. Many would rather not look at these crimes and pretend that they will just fade away. But it is not possible to end them without facing them directly and knowing their full horror. This book helps us to do both. It forces us to see and to remember in detail the oppression of women in its many insidious forms. But it does not leave us there as it also suggests strategies for change. This record of the first International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women is thus a valuable resource for all who want to take action to end such crimes and to build a world based on an end to the domination and victimization of people in any form. - Charlotte Bunch,

NYC, January, 1984

FOOTNOTES 1. See ‘International Feminism: Networking Against Female Sexual Slavery,’’ A Report of the Global Feminist Workshop Against Trafficking in Women, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 1983. Available from the International Women’s Tribune Centre (IWTC), 777 UN Plaza, New York, NY 10017. 2. For more discussion of this issue at other conferences, see ‘‘Women

in Development: A Resource Guide for Organization and Action,” ISIS, C.P. 50 (Cornavin), 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland, and ‘“‘Developing Strategies for the Future: Feminist Perspectives,’’ Reports of the International Feminist Workshops in Bangkok (1979) and Stony Point (1980), available from the IWTC.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to be able to acknowledge here all the women who made the International Tribunal possible. Unfortunately, we don’t know who all of them are. Those we do know about include the members of the coordinating committee who, along with the Belgian committee, were responsible for organizing the Tribunal. The women on this committee were: Mariam Baz zanella from Italy; Lily Boeykens from Belgium; Grainne Farren, an Irish woman who lives in Paris; Erica Fischer from Austria; Maureen Giroux, an American who lives in Paris (and who, together with Grainne, had the task of coordinating the various Tribunal committees); Lydia Horton, an American who lives in Brussels; Mireya Gutierrez, a Mexican woman who lived in Paris (now in Mexico); Jennifer Morris from Britain (her alternate being Marguerite Russell from Britain; later Jennifer dropped out and Marguerite became a regular member of the committee); Diana Russell from the U.S.A.; and Marit Winnem from Norway, later replaced by Lisbet Natland from Norway. The names of the national contacts, whose task it was to organize Tribunal groups in each country, are: Laurie Bebbington (Australia), Erica Fischer (Austria), Lydia Horton (Belgium, Kamma Langberg, Signe Sylvest (Denmark), Marguerite Russell (England), Margot de Labar, Catherine Duchemin (France), Angelika Dietrich, Tina Perincioli, Barbara Schleich (Germany), Margaret Papandreou (Greece), Loes Emck, Meta Van Beek (Holland), Katrin Didriksen (Iceland), Savitri Nigam (India), Nuala Fennell (Ireland), Marcia Freedman, Joanne Yaron (Israel), Carmela Paloschi (Italy), Yuko Ijichi (Japan), Mireya Gutierrez (Mexico), Lisbet Natland, Inger Sand (Norway), Margarida Avelar, Helena Balsa (Portugal), Maria Santiago (Puerto Rico), Anne Mayne (South Africa), Christina Alberdi (Spain), Monica Engberg (Sweden), Jeanne Dubois (Switzerland), Diana Russell (U.S.A.). We asked these national contacts to let us know whose work in each country should be acknowledged. However, presumably because of insufficient time and summer vacations, we only heard from France. So it must be remembered that there are many, many names missing from these acknowledgments. The women who volunteered their skills as interpreters during the Tribunal were: Reina Ascherman, Stella Capelluto, Trudy Ernst, Lulu Eertwegh, J. P. Jans, Marjolein Juda, Caroline Kunstenaar, Elka Markuszower, Luise Moffat, Joke Oud, Susan Pawlak, Francoise Proost, Annie Putzeys, Francoise Raynaud, Marleen Roekens, Linda Rosen, Rita Rutten, Aideen Ryan, Agnes Schoevaerts, Nora Thybaert, Anita Vandamme, Lieven Van Elsen, Annemarie Wesselink, Mia Willard, Inge Susan Worm. Other women may have volunteered without giving us their names. The women who worked so hard during the Tribunal at the reception desk, in the secretariat, at the doors, and at the Brussels Office were: Michele Alexander, Therese Chonquerez, Marie-Louise Coppens, Ingrid De Bie, Hetty Diepenbrock, Lydia ‘‘Babe’’ Horton, Kerstin Huygelen, Francoise Palante, Claire Raick, Berthe-Marie Reichardt, Greta Richter, Rita Schlitz, Mija Symoens, Ann Vandenberghe. Other women who helped in a great variety of ways were: Rika De

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

the Belgian Minister of Dutch Culture, who offered the Tribun icte me free use of the Palais des Congres for five wi aos i os) Boeykens who allowed a ten-month occupation by the Tribuna 0 = em of ty office; Hetty Diepenbrock, who took on the responsibili women attending the Tribunal; Moni Van Look, who took on the t on less task of moderating at the Tribunal and whose input in the 6 eh s prior to it were immensely valuable; Joy Chamberlain, who organized an international video team, and who, together with Mary Sheridan, has produced a half-hour videotape on the Tribunal"; the all-women crew who came from Britain to film the Tribunal: Mira Hammermesh (Director), Madeleine Most (Assistant Director), Diane Tammes and and Judith Freeman Mary Dickenson Madeleine Most (Camera), (Sound); “The Flying Lesbians,’ a German womens’ rock band who played twice during the Tribunal — free; Anne Delcoigne, the artist who i

ibun

osters and

buttons.

ccaiben the Tribunal tapes (aside from Nicole per ie Italian and Dutch transcription) were: English, who did all the French, Stella Capelluto, Ingrid De Bie, Eva Henstead, Rita Schiltz. . Acknowledgments for sizable financial contributions are included in the section on our budget. With regard to the help we have received in putting this book together, we would like to express our appreciation to the many women who have made this enormous undertaking possible. Firstly we want to thank the women who translated all the materials that had been transcribed from the tapes. They are: Michele Alexander, Michéle Bosc, Stella Capelluto, Hetty Diepenbrock, Elisabeth Dodge, Margaret Freedman, Eva Henstead, Jean McNeal, Susi Muncey, Rita Schiltz, Marina Van Acker, Liz Woodcraft, and Anne Barham, who also helped greatly with some of the last minute typing.

A big thanks to Lydia Horton for responding to our numerous requests for information and material when we were working on the book in London; to Hetty Diepenbrock for her helpfulness in trying to locate whatever it was we needed; to Lydia ‘Babe’ Horton who made herself available to help us regardless of how tedious the task, or how odd the hours; to Ann Vandenberghe and Mimi Coppens for helping us out in so many ways, particularly Ann for so generously permitting us to take over her apartment as our place of work for three whole weeks; to Melinda Coleman for her remarkably swift and competent editing job; to Lily Boeykens and Grainne Farren, the two members of the coordinating *This half inch black and white videotape includes excerpts of testimony, workshops, and resolutions; it also gives a general introduction to the oppression of women and some of the problems entailed in developing solutions. Available from

Just Us Women Video Collective, P.O. Box 7034, Berkeley, Ca. 94707 U.S.A., or from Mary Sheridan c/o The Other Cinema, 12-14 Little Newport Street, London

W.C.2., England.

“*This venture was made possible by the generous support of two film schools,

and a friendly film company, who loaned the equipment as well as the free work of the crew. The expenses of travel and the 5-day stay were covered by V.A.R.A., Dutch Television, who in exchange for a ten minute report about the Tribunal,

supplied 12 rolls of colored film and the lab cost for the develop ing and printing of this film. Mira, whose past films include a fine hour-long movie

“Two Women

” shown on British television, still hopes to complete a film about the Tribunal but has not yet been able to get the necessary financial support.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

committee selected to read the manuscript, for their feedback and suggestions, almost all of which we have accepted; to Laura Zelmachild, Marcia Keller, and Lydia Horton for their helpful suggestions; and finally, our biggest thanks of all to Bernadette Jiru, for the incredibly rapid and expert typing she did in the most pressured of circumstances, and all for free. We are also grateful to the committee on faculty research at Mills College for contributing $400 to the costs of editing this book. And finally, we would like to thank Les Femmes Publishing house for their enthusiastic support of our work, and for recognizing the importance of making this book available as soon as humanly possible.

CONTENTS Preface

Simone

de Beauvoir's Remarks

Introduction

Part!

The International Tribunal Begins

.................+.--

1

The Testimony and Reports CHAPTER

1.

FOPCeG MORN: a:as0cueeiidals ss CREE EG eae ms 8 Witness 1: Ireland 8 Witness 2: Portugal 9 Witness 3: Belgium 11 Witness 4: Holland 13 Witness 5: Norway 14 }#Witnesses 6 and 7: Austria 15 Witness 8: England 18 Witness 9: England 20 #£Witness 10: Belgium 21 #2,®}Witness 11: Belgium 21 Witness 12: Italy 22 Witness 13: France 23 #£Witness 14: Israel 24 Witness 15: Switzerland 25 Witness 16: Canada 25

CHAPTER

2.

Compulsory Non-Motherhood.........cccccecsccccsecs 27 Forced Sterilization—Witness 1: Puerto Rico 27 Single Mother's Rights Denied—Witness 1: Japan 29

CHAPTER

3.

Persecution of Non-Virgins and Unmarried Mothers...... 31 Witness 1: Portugal 31 Witness 2: Brazil 33

CHAPTER

4.

Crimes Perpetrated by the Medical Profession........... 34 Brutality Towards Women Giving Birth—Witness 1: Italy 34

General Medical Crimes—Witness 1: Germany Witness 2: Belgium 39 Witness 3: Spain 39

37

CHAPTER

5.

Compulsory Heterosexuality: Persecution of Lesbians..... 40 Witness 1: Norway 40 #£Witness 2: England 43 Witnesses 3 to 7: Germany 45 #£Witness 8: Holland 51 Witness 9: France 52 Witness 10: Switzerland 54 Witness 11: Mozambique 56 Witness 12: Spain 57

CHAPTER

6.

Crimes Within the Patriarchal Family..............200-- 58 Witnesses 1 and 2: Belgium 58 Witness 3: Ireland 60 Witness 4: Israel 61 Witness 5: France 64 °#Witness 6: Tunisia 65 Witness 7: Canada 65

CHAPTER

7.

BGONOMIC CHINOB i. 00. os ee oe 0-05 eens ,

tit

The violent behavior of this woman’s husband is not as shocking as the fact that the laws so clearly protect his whims, that they

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

143

fail so completely to protect thé interests of women, and that the priest, the police, and the doctors in the mental hospital, all actively cooperated or supported the violent and criminal behavior of this man. Complicity of this sort among men is surely one reason why there are many more women in mental hospitals than men.

ASSAULT With awareness about rape and woman battering spreading fast, the problem of non-sexual assault on women outside of marriage is sometimes forgotten. Men’s greater physical strength and generally greater readiness to use violence affects all relationships between women and men, even if we are not aware of it, or have never been the victim of violence in our own lives. I doubt that there is a woman alive in the world today who has never feared male violence, and fear, of course, affects behavior. The following testimony is about a German woman who was assaulted by a man during the days of the Tribunal.

Witness: Belgium

There is a group of about fifty women staying in a youth hostel in Brussels, and we have been subjected to a lot of verbal humiliation and violence from the owner ever since we first got there. We haven’t taken any action until now, probably because as women we are used to this kind of stuff. But today, one of the women staying in the hostel, a German woman, went to the bathroom after breakfast and couldn’t get the door unlocked to get out again. So she yelled for assistance. The owner had to open the door with a pair of pliers. Once he got the door open, he was so enraged that she had gotten herself locked in, that he hit her on the back with the pliers. We were getting dressed up in our room—it was right before the Tribunal—when she came upstairs really hysterical. Immediately after her came the owner, yelling at her, telling her to pack her bags and get out of there, that she was no longer welcome in the hostel. Well, naturally she refused, and we all stood by her. Like the rest of us, she had already paid for all 5 nights. The man left, and since she was surrounded by a group of friends, about nine women, the rest of us thought that the matter was over, but that we would bring it up at the Tribunal this morning.

THE INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL BEGINS

144

Soon afterward, we left, and the assaulted woman and her friends prepared to leave. However, when they went downstairs the owner put himself in front of the door and would not let them go out. He said that he had called the police, and that they were to wait. The police finally arrived, demanded the women’s passports, addresses and so forth, but the women refused, asked them why they were being detained, and what they had done wrong. Because they refused, the police threatened to take them to jail, and ordered a police wagon. Another police car arrived with sirens sounding, and lights flashing, designed to intimidate the women. Still the women refused to cooperate and the head of police was finally called. He demanded their passports and took their addresses down. When the police found out that these women were from the Tribunal, their faces suddenly dropped, and they all retired to a little room, leaving the women to wait outside. They talked among themselves for half an hour, then came back out, and the head of police told the women

that if they

would promise to remain calm, and be good, that they would be allowed to stay one more night. Remember, we had all paid for five nights, but we were to be allowed to stay! Meanwhile the owner of the hostel is calling the women of the Tribunal lunatics and idiots. So what we want to do is warn the women who are staying in the International Hotel des Jeunes, to please meet behind the assembly hall here so that we can decide what to do. We also want to put the following resolution to you: “We, the women of the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women, demand an immediate investigation of the owner of the International Hotel des Jeunes, Rue du Congrés, Brussels, with the purpose of revocation of his license. This man has committed crimes against women.” (Resolution passed by acclamation). Finally, please try to put pressure on the local community to do something about this man. We think he is dangerous.

FEMICIDE We must realize that a lot of homicide is in fact femicide. We must recognize the sexual politics of murder. From the burning of witches in the past, to the more recent widespread custom of female infanticide in many societies, to the killing of women for “honor,” we realize that femicide has been going on a long time. But since it involves mere females, there was no name for it until Carol Orlock invented the word “femicide.”’ Testimony from the U.S.A. and Lebanon follows.

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

145

Witness 1: U.S.A.

Some wifebeating escalates into wife killing. One study found that in 85% of domestic homicide cases, the police had been called for help at least once, and in 50% of such cases, the police had been called 5 or more times prior to the murder. The inadequate handling of violent husbands results in immeasurable pain and suffering for many women, and contributes to this form of femicide. One out of every 10 female murder victims in the U.S. is killed during rape or other sexual offenses. Brownmiller in her recent book Against Our Will, estimates that in the U.S., four hundred rape-murders are committed by men every year. Fear of death in

the hands of rapists is much greater than this figure might indicate. We do not know how many of the 55,210 women who reported being raped in the U.S. in 1974, or how many of the larger number who never reported their experience, submitted because of their fear of being killed. But we are sure that they are many. This form of femicide—rape-murder—has consequences far beyond the estimated 400 victims. It terrorizes many of us whether we become rape victims or not. The following cases of femicide were gathered from the pages of San Francisco newspapers by Louise Merrill. Janet Ann Taylor (age 21): Strangled and dumped by the side of the road in San Mateo County. Mariko Sato (age 25): Stabbed, hacked and shot. Her body was stripped from the waist down, wrapped in a blanket and stuffed in a trunk in a San Francisco apartment. Darlene Maxwell (age 28): Tied at the neck, wrists, and ankles with

a rope. Gagged with her own underwear, strangled and left in an industrial area of San Francisco. Her body was not identified for 2 days after being found. Betty Jean Keith (age 25-30): Stabbed in the throat and left in the

water off Richmond sometime between midnight and five a.m. Her body was found the same day, but not identified for three days. Mary E. Robinson (age 23): Stabbed eighteen times by her boyfriend. ‘She called me a coward,” he said. ‘‘She said I was afraid to fight for my rights.”’ San Francisco. Lucy Ann Gilbride (age 52): Slashed and clubbed to death in her home in San Rafael. , Cassie Riley (age 13): Beaten, stripped, raped, drowned. Union City. Sonya Johnson (age 4): Raped and clubbed, possibly strangled. She was missing eleven days before her body was found and identified. San Jose.

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Diane David (age 36): Beaten, tied, gagged, and stabbed, and left in her apartment in San Francisco. Arlis Perry (age 19): Stabbed, strangled. Raped with altar candles in a church on the Stanford campus. She had been stripped from the waist down. Linda Faye Barber (age 24): Beaten to death and left naked near the golf course of the Castlewood Country Club. Maude Burgess (age 83): Left naked and spread-eagled on her bed, her arms and legs tied with sheets. It was two days before her body was found. A pillow slip had been pulled over her head. San Francisco. Josephine de Caso (age 27): Stabbed and beaten and left in a deserted stable. Milpitas. Darlene Davenport (age 16): Stripped and hacked to death. Left ina parking lot in Oakland. Susan Murphy (age 19): Beaten to death in her living room in Oakland. Debra Pera (age 19): Lived three days after having been whipped and beaten by her boyfriend. San Francisco. Rosie Lee Norris (age 32): Stabbed to death in her apartment in San Francisco. Her body was discovered, with her robe and night gown down around her waist, on December 24. The public was spared news of the killing until after Christmas.

Men tell us not to take a morbid interest in these atrocities. The epitome of triviality is alleged to be a curiosity about “the latest rape and the latest murder.” The murder and mutilation of a woman is not considered a political event. Men tell us that they cannot be blamed for what a few maniacs do. Yet the very process of denying the political content of the terror helps to perpetuate it, keeps us weak, vulnerable, and fearful. These are 20th century witchburnings. The “maniacs” who commit these atrocities are acting out the logical conclusion of the woman-hatred which pervades the entire culture. Recently, this has resulted in several pornographic movies whose climax is said to be the actual killing and dismembering of a woman. These so-called “snuff’ movies are now being imitated. For example, a movie shown in the U.S. is advertising that it is impossible for the audience to tell whether the killing of the woman is real or not. The women slaughtered in these movies have no names. The names of those I have read out to you today will soon be obliterated. No demonstrations have accompanied them to the grave, no protests rocked the city, no leaflets were passed out, no committees were formed. But today we have remembered them. And tomorrow we must act to stop femicide!

+ ¥oe =

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Witness 2: U.S.A.

This testimony was presented in the form of an unpublished poem. Pat Parker wrote Womanslaughter* about the murder of her sister by her sister’s husband, and read it at the Tribunal. Since it is a very long poem, we reluctantly include exerpts only. WOMANSLAUGHTER (Excerpts from a poem by Pat Parker.) Hello, Hello Death There was a quiet man He married a quiet wife Together, they lived

a quiet life. Not so, not so her sisters said, the truth comes out as she lies dead. He beat her. He accused her

of awful things and he beat her. One day she left.

She went to her sister’s house She, too, was a woman alone. The quiet man came and beat her. Both women were afraid. “Hello, Hello Police I am a woman and I am afraid. My husband means to kill me.”

“Lady, there’s nothing we can do until he tries to hurt you. Go to the judge and he will decree that your husband leaves you be! She found an apartment with a friend. She would begin a new life again. Interlocutory Divorce Decreeing the end of the quiet man. *Copyright: Pat Parker, 1974.

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He came to her home and he beat her.

Both women

were afraid.

“Hello, Hello Police I am a woman alone and I am afraid. My ex-husband means

to kill me.”

“Fear not, Lady He will be sought.” It was too late, when he was caught. One day a quiet man shot his quiet wife three times in the back. He shot her friend as well. His wife died. What shall be done with this man?

Is it a murder of first degree? No, said the men It is a crime of passion. He was angry.

Is it a murder of second degree? Yes, said the men, but we will not call it that. We must think of his record. We will call it manslaughter. The sentence is the same. What will we do with this man? His boss, a white man came. This is a quiet Black man, he said He works well for me The men sent the quiet Black man to jail. He went to work in the day.

He went to jail and slept at night. In one year, he went home. Sister, I do not understand, I rage and do not understand. In Texas, he would be freed. One Black kills another One less Black for Texas.

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

But this is not Texas. This is California. The city of angels. Was his crime so slight? George Jackson served years for robbery. Eldridge Cleaver served years for rape. I know of a man in Texas who is serving 40 years for possession of marijuana. Was his crime so slight? What was his crime? He only killed his wife. But a divorce I say. Not final; they say; Her things were his including her life. Men cannot rape their wives! Men cannot kill their wives. They passion them to death. The three sisters of Shirley Jones came and cremated her. And they were not strong. Hear me nowIt is almost three years and I am again strong. I have gained many sisters. And if one is beaten, or raped, or killed, I will not come in mourning black. I will not pick the right flowers I will not celebrate her death and it will matter not if she’s Black or whiteif she loves women or men. I will come with my many sisters and decorate the streets with the innards of those brothers-in-womenslaughter. No more, can I dull my rage in alcohol and deference

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to men’s courts. I will come to my sisters,

not dutiful, I will come strong.

Witness 3: Lebanon*

I want to relate to you two extreme examples of deprivation of freedom for women in Lebanon. Last year a brother cut the head off his sister because she married the man she loved. Another brother killed his sister whom he believed to have been unfaithful to the very rich man her family obliged her to marry. Autopsy proved that the girl was still a virgin and that her husband must have been impotent.

THE CASTRATION OF FEMALES: CLITORIDECTOMY, EXCISION, AND INFIBULATION The word castration almost always refers to men; but anxious as men appear to be about it, females are much more widely subject to castration. We use the word to refer to clitoridectomy (the removal of the entire clitoris), excision (the removal of the clitoris

and the adjacent parts of the labia minora

or all the exterior

genitalia except the labia majora), and infibulation (excision followed by the sewing of the genitals to obliterate the entrance to the vagina except for a tiny opening). In the testimony on medical crimes, the German women referred to the removal of a woman’s uterus and ovaries as castration; but we feel it preferable to use the word for the destruction of our sexuality. The following testimony from Guinea was not given personally, but was brought by a group of French women who have been researching this topic for some time.

Witness 1: Guinea

There was a wall around the place where we lived, from which you could see the big baths where women and men came to wash. It was there that one day I saw myself the savage mutilation called excision that is inflicted on the women of my country between the ages of 10 and 12, that is, a year before their puberty. F. *This information was contained in a letter to the Tribunal.

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was stretched out on the pebbles on the ground. There were six women surrounding her; the eldest, the woman who was to do the excision (the exciseuse), was of her own family. F was being firmly held down by the women, who held her legs apart and made every effort to keep her still despite the desperate convulsions of her body. The operation was done without any anesthetic, with no regard for hygiene or precautions of any sort. With the broken neck of a bottle, the old woman banged hard down, cutting into the upper part of my friend’s genitals so as to make as wide a cut as possible, since “an incomplete excision does not constitute a sufficient guarantee against profligacy in girls.” The blunt glass of the bottle did not cut deeply enough into my friends genitals and the exciseuse had to do it several more times. The blood gushed, my friend cried out, and the prayers being intoned could not drown her screams. When the clitoris had been ripped out, the women howled with joy, and forced my friend to get up despite a streaming hemorrhage, to parade her through the town. Dressed in a white loin-cloth, her breasts bare, although prior to excision women never appear naked in public, she walked with difficulty. Behind her a dozen or so women, young and no so young, were singing to the accompaniment of an instrument made of rings of gourd. They were informing the village that my friend was ready for marriage. In Guinea, in fact, no man marries a woman who has not been excised and who is not a virgin, with rare exceptions. The wound takes 2 to 3 weeks to heal, and is horribly painful. My friend screamed every time she urinated. To alleviate the pain she carried a little jug of water with her, which she poured on herself as she urinated. She was lucky enough not to suffer complications; infection and painful side-effects due to the cutting of the urinary tract or the perineum frequently occur. Among some of my friends a “nevrome” formed at the point where the nerve had been cut. This sets off flashing pains similar to those felt with amputated limbs. In my country, Guinea, 85% of the women are today excised, and my country is said to be progressive. Clitoridectomy is practised in the Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, the Ivory Coast, among the Dogons of the Niger, the Mendingo’s of Mali, the Toucouleu in the North of Senegal, and the Peuls, and among many other African tribes. I would like to add that in some other countries this savage mutilation is not enough; it is also necessary to sew the woman

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up in order to really dispossess her of her body. After having cut, without the benefit of anesthetic, part of the large lips, they are brought together by piercing them with pins. This way they grow together, except for a space for the passage of blood and urine. The young wife must, before her wedding night, have it reopened with a razor. Her husband can, moreover, always insist on having his wife sewn up again if he is thinking of leaving her for some time. I appeal to the solidarity of women to make their dignity as human beings recognized, dignity which is denied by the dispossessing of their bodies and souls. I appeal to the solidarity of women to end patriarchal oppression and violence founded on the fear and hatred of our bodies. I appeal to the solidarity of women to end these barbarous mutilations.

S compile boda In countries, such as the U.S. and Britain, where the physical castration of females is nolonger practiced, psychological means often achieve a similar effect—totally cutting women off from their own sexuality.

VIOLENT REPRESSION

OF NON-CONFORMING

GIRLS

While there is only one testimony from France about this crime, it is of course not unique to this country. If girls reject the role they are supposed to play, society tries to force or manipulate them into changing their minds. And a double standard invariably operates, particularly where sexual behavior is concerned. A sexually active young woman can be institutionalized for behavior that would be bragged about by a boy.

Witness

1: France

I would like to speak about female delinquency, the type of rebellion specific to women. It’s very difficult. They are even called “difficult women.” Most of these women are 12 to 13 years old. Women running away from home, stealing, and committing acts of violence, are on the increase everywhere. These are children

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who speak, who act, who present real opposition to the system. Those concerned in the struggle must absolutely not remain unaware of this. We must no longer ignore the fact that children are a section of society, and that the struggle of these women is genuine. I presume that among you here there are some women who are teachers and who have jobs in which you are in contact with children. And I hope you will take note of what I say. Because I want to speak about how children are repressed, and to say that we should now be able to let these children speak. These young women have rebelled in exactly the same way as the guys, but they are tried in five minutes and the sentences can be up to four years imprisonment. They are often violated while they are running away by men who offer them a place to stay, or by truckdrivers when they try to travel. They are also often raped by the cops. And at the police station they are made to go through vaginal examinations, blood tests and repeated psychological tests.

I would also like to point out that the only attitude of the children’s courts towards these women is that of repression. Repression no longer means shutting people up within walls. Walls have been replaced by structures, by a logical system, scientific, subtle and phallocratic. Repression can be exercised by severe or mild methods. The children’s courts do not accept rape as a cause for revolt among women; they do not consider these women’s backgrounds. They do not listen to the questions of these women, nor do they really look into the cause of the revolt. Repression is now called therapy. It poses as redemption, re-education. They take away your right to speak, they deny you, they sterilize you, they call you a problem-child, they put you into categories, they make you undergo humiliations at the police station. The apparently open-minded system, of course, has but one goal—social rehabilitation, work at any price, marriage and motherhood. At St. Omer, for example, there is a special service set up for difficult women. This consists of therapy. In my opinion, this therapy is one that instills the greatest feeling of guilt. You get every comfort—you have the right to knit, you have the right to thread beads. What does this amount to? You are put into a position where you can only receive. These forms of therapy firmly instill only feelings of culpability, and misery! It is applied like a cane to instill obedience. All the protection they appear to be offering, makes you sweat blood. The repression is being completely concealed. All the security is only a phantom through which can be seen slavery and its rotten implications.

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TORTURE

OF WOMEN

FOR POLITICAL

ENDS

Elsewhere we have suggested that violence against women in general serves a political function in maintaining sexism. In the following testimony from Korea, however, rape and torture are used for more organized political ends. Of course men are tortured for the same ends; nevertheless an additional oppressive factor is introduced by the fact that these women are tortured by men, and are helpless prey of their captors’ sexist sadism.

Witness 1: Korea

I am a 2nd-generation South Korean woman, born in Japan, where I also live. My name is Kwon Mal-Ja. I am 26 years old and a second-year student at Seoul University, South Korea. Last summer while I was studying in Korea, I was taken to a KCIA (the Korean secret police) office and sexually assaulted. This unbearable experience completely shattered my hopes for the future. I had decided to go to Korea to study, because I did not know the language of my homeland nor the facts about my home country. I wanted to live as a Korean woman, proud of the heritage of the Korean people. One day in March 1974, I travelled to South Korea. University life was quite enjoyable. I made deliberate efforts to learn Korean customs by making friends with as many Korean students and visiting as many Korean homes as possible. One day, a KCIA agent came and took me to his office. It was so unexpected. I clearly remember the day. It was August 5, 1975, around 11:30 in the morning. I was alone in my room, reading a book. My roommate had gone to school, when a man quite unexpectedly came into my room and asked me to go with him, showing his KCIA ID card. He was the kind of person who could easily send a shudder through your frame when you looked at him. A car was parked outside and another tough-looking man was standing by the car. I was driven to a certain two story house near the KCIA headquarters in Namsang. The house looked like any other ordinary residence. I was nervous and anxiously wondering what would happen. After lunch, several men began to interrogate me in frightening voices. The first question they asked me was, ““You know why you were brought here, don’t you?”’ I said, “‘No.’”’ He insisted that I knew, saying, “I bet you know. Just ask yourself!” I again had to say, ‘“No!” For a few moments, exchanges of the same question

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and the same answer ensued. The interrogators threatened, “You know what this place is. It is entirely up to us whether we kill you or leave you alive, so you’d better tell us the truth.” They demanded that I give them names of Korean friends from Japan. I gave them a few names. Then they asked me to write a statement to the effect that I was engaged in political activities with these friends. Since I was not engaging in any such activities, I didn’t have anything to write. SoI wrote about my relations with them, as they were. Upon the completion of my statement, they said, “You are not sincere, nor cooperative,’’ and suddenly hit me on the cheek. They threatened, “If you don’t tell us, they are ways to make you speak. We can also go to another room to continue our interrogation. There are torture specialists in the basement, who can do anything they want. You may not get out of this place alive.” Then they began to read testimonies of the victims of torture which were reported in the newspapers, and compared me to them.

Il was completely out of my mind with fear. I cannot even remember—except fragmentarily—what I said during the interrogation, which lasted for ten days. They asked about every detail of the trips I made in Japan and in Korea, of my extra curricular activities at the university, of the purpose of my study in Korea, of my work as a teacher at the Tokyo Korean School, of the people I got acquainted with in Japan and in Korea, and they made me rewrite the statement many times. They sometimes continued their interrogation throughout the night and gave me little sleep, if they allowed me to sleep at all. One day when I was half dazed, I overheard conversations among the men. ‘“‘We will just make use of her as much as possible. If she is not cooperative, we will wipe her out,” they said. I was so frightened thinking that I could never get out of this place alive, I burst into tears. Faces of my parents, brothers and sisters and friends passed through my mind one after another. After that, I confirmed whatever they wanted me to, whether it was true or not. They did not hesitate to use obscenities in front of me and to offer me drinks. One such night, I felt a man’s hand pawing my body. I was startled and got up. The man went out quietly. I think it was August 14, the day before I was released, that a man came into my room and tried to assault me sexually. I resisted him to the utmost of my ability. The man finally gave up and reluctantly went out of my room. On the day that I was released, a KCIA man came to my apartment and threatened me, saying, ‘‘Unless you allow yourself to sleep with me, I will again take you to the KCIA, and will not

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give your passport back.” Then he jumped on me like a beast and assaulted me sexually. My virginity was taken away by force and I suffered from unbearable shame. The man went out of my room and I was left there almost unconscious, thinking vaguely of my parents and brothers and sisters and my future. Before I was released on August 15, I was forced to sign a statement which roughly said, “I will not tell anybody whatsoever about the investigation I went through at the KCIA office. If I do, I shall have to be taken to the KCIA again and punished.” I was asked to write a statement of repentance to the effect that I would actively participate in the activities of the Student’s Defense Corps and work for the Yushin Regime. After I was released, I was asked to go to the Prince Hotel on the 21st, and again was sexually assaulted by KCIA beasts. They also checked the date of my departure for Japan. I received a phone call from someone, probably in a higher echelon of the KCIA. He had the nerve to say to me, “Please, come to see us again when you come back to Seoul. We will take care of everything, your registration at the university, living, job-finding, and everything else.” I went back to Japan with a deeply wounded heart—dquite unlike the time I was leaving for Korea. Though I felt relieved at home, I could not get over my bitter feelings about the merciless acts performed on me in Seoul. Of course, I could not talk about them with my parents. As days passed, I became even more embittered against the Park regime and those hateful KCIA beasts. Towards the end of September, I received a letter from a man in the KCIA. He said in the letter that I should return to Korea as soon as possible, and that he could help me through some agents in Japan. My bitter feeling against them was renewed, though at the same time, I felt very worried because of the KCIA agents in Japan. Who can tell what they are going to do to me here? I decided not to go back to Seoul which meant that I had to give up my hope of becoming a teacher. I also realized I could not get married, being a deflowered woman. A close friend whom I told about my asault encouraged me not to give up my desire to live. On November 22, the KCIA made an announcement about an alleged “spy plot of Korean students from Japan.” To my great surprise, I found, on the list of those arrested, the names of my friends whom I had mentioned during the course of my investigation at the KCIA office. I felt ashamed and had to blame myself for the fact that they were arrested for framed-up crimes, simply because I had mentioned their names. I realized for the first time

that I had been used for the purpose of implicating many Korean

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students from Japan. My understanding of this is what prompted me to talk about it. I can say unequivocally that the spy plot by the Korean students from Japan was a complete frame-up. The Park regime and the KCIA not only destroyed my life as a woman, but also used my forced confession to fake an entirely groundless spy plot. I had heard many stories of tortures and sexual assaults which Korean women students suffered, and after my own experience I know that these must be true. I decided to make this story public in the hope that democracy will be realized in Korea sooner. I sincerely hope that the days of the Park regime are numbered. I could have kept my shameful experience to myself. I have to carry the burden of it being known publicly that I am a ‘‘marred woman.” I was fully aware that the act of making the story public would have other negative effects on me. The astonishment of my parents when they were finally told about my experience was indescribable. Who knows whether the KCIA will not take my life away? Nevertheless, I decided to publicize what happened to me so that more young people like myself may not suffer from the same shame, and so that the unification of my home country may be realized sooner.

BRUTAL TREATMENT

OF WOMEN

IN PRISON

While men are also treated brutally in prison, sexism adds another dimension to the experience of women in prison. The testimony of Lidia Falcon from Spain is particularly eloquent in explaining this. An Indian woman living in England who chaired the panel on this topic also gave the following introduction to it. Testimony follows that from Iran, Chile, India, Spain, Greece, the Soviet Union, Northern Ireland, Switzerland and West Germany.

PP haol eee The workshop on women in prison yesterday expressed the feeling that women, because of their position in society and their relationship to the reproductive process, are oppressed in every kind of way. Therefore, if they end up in prison, they cannot really be seen as divorced from this system which sends them to prison, and therefore all women are political prisoners in a very broad sense. However, it was also felt that there are women who have organized with males working for similar causes. These women,

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being in a much more exposed situation, tend to be more viciously and more brutally treated when they are arrested, when they are interrogated, when they are put into prison. So, women as political prisoners in this sense, are in a much more difficult situation, face a much harsher reality, and therefore we have to deal with the problem in a slightly different way. We felt that though women in this conference are generally from Western Europe, and generally from the non-communist world, we would like to point out that political prisoners exist everywhere. In the Third World, especially where poverty and the lack of development of the economic system makes it so difficult for the ruling class to deliver the goods to its people, women at even the lowest levels increasingly come into conflict with the State. In India, for example, if you just go out on a demonstration protesting high prices, if you just walk down the street with your pots and pans, you might end up in prison and be treated as a political prisoner. You might object to the way in which children are deprived of textbooks and education in school, and you might end up being a political prisoner. Therefore, depending on the level of development of different countries, women who seem to be struggling on a non-political level, end up in a very political and difficult situation. This is the background for the reports that you now will hear.

Witness 1: Iran

The fascist regime of Iran, which the U.N. Human Rights Commission has declared as the second worst offender after Brazil in the use of torture on political dissidents, has once again on the occasion of International Women’s Year, embarked upon another large-scale public relations ruse, at great cost, in order to hide its ugly face behind a torrent of boastful propaganda. Princess Ashraf, the Shah’s sister, was the spokeswoman of the regime at the U.N. International Women’s Conference in Mexico City, masquerading as the representative of Iranian women, who have, according to her, achieved their rightful freedom and liberty and are actively participating in the political and social affairs of their country. Princess Ashraf, as usual, laced her misrepresentation with a $2 million donation to the research program endorsed by the Conference. The Shah himself claims that since the launching of his socalled “White Revolution,” ultimate liberty has been granted to the women of Iran by their right to vote. The Shah has ordered that Iranian women must celebrate International Women’s Day

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not on March 8, as elsewhere in the world, but on February 27, marking the date on which women’s enfranchisement was decreed by his Gracious Majesty! In this farcical system, Iranian women are represented by the Organization of Iranian Women, once again presided over by Princess Ashraf, in which a medley of upper class dilettante women join in a chorus of praise for His Majesty. In this carnival the laboring millions of Iranian women have no properly elected delegates. The truth is that under the existing dictatorship in Iran, the vast majority of citizens are utterly deprived of the most elementary forms of political expression, let alone the women of the countryside who are among the most deprived anywhere, despite the enormous oil revenues, and the regime’s boastful schemes to abolish illiteracy. According to the government’s own statistics, some 80% of Iranian women are illiterate. This percentage is even higher—up to 96%—at the rural and village level. These statistics, reflecting the pathetic state of women in Iran, give the lie to the statutes purporting to protect women and their families. Ignorance arising from sheer illiteracy would preclude effective use of the law by these women, assuming that the law were on their side, which it is not. In reality, and despite grandiose schemes and declarations by the regime, there are fun-

damental inequalities existing between men and women in the law which have not been remedied. The man is considered the head of the family, can marry more than one wife, and his testimony in any dispute counts as twice as effective as that of a woman. The woman is subordinate and cannot travel without her husband’s permission. Many Iranians, having recognized the anti-popular nature of this ClA-backed regime, have struggled against it. In recent years the extent and momentum of this struggle has enlarged in proportion to the brutality and repression of the regime. Amnesty International in its latest annual report estimates from 25,000 to 100,000 political prisoners in Iran, among whom there are 4,000 women.

Most of them are, or have been, subjected to maltreat-

ment or barbaric tortures such as beatings, whippings, the application of cigarette burns, slow roasting on electric grills, shock treatment to genitalia, avulsion of nails, rape, and maltreatment of children in front of captive mothers. And, usually, when they capture a man, they rape his wife in front of him, to psychologically weaken him. A woman political prisoner who managed to escape from prison, has written about her torture. In it she tells how they spoonfed her with urine and excrement. Many of these militant women political prisoners, if they have survived their

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torture, have become paralyzed, blind, or have lost their arms or legs. Witness 2: Iran

I am one of the delegates from the Confederation of Iranian Students. I am going to tell you about the torture in the prisons of the Shah—the torture of children and the relatives of women prisoners in front of them to make them confess, the taking of hostages from members of their families, repeated rape, hot tables, whips etc. This torture has created an unbearably terrifying situation for an entire people. And I will quote a few extracts from the Epic of Resistance by Achraf Tehrani, written after her escape from prison. Achraf Tehrani is a member of the People’s Feddayin Guerrilla Organization. She was arrested on March 19, 1971, at the age of 21 years. Her case was heard in secret and she was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. She managed to escape on March 25th, 1973. This is how she described some of what happened to her. He suddenly got angry, . . . and he said to the others, ‘Beat this whore up.’ He tied me onto a bed while he was insulting me. The room was full of cops, some of them had come to watch. But of course, if need be, they would help the torturers. They were there, above all, to watch a revolutionary woman being tortured. They found the show very amusing. Some of them even seemed calm and looked as if nothing abnormal was happening, which surprised me because I could never have imagined that a torturer could be that way. Captain Niktab was the main one, the others helped him. The whip was passed from one pair of hands to another. One by one they struck the soles of my feet. The pain was intense but I recited poems and shouted slogans which gave me more strength. This infuriated them. And the blows from the whip got more and more severe. Nothing incensed them more than my insults against the Shah. I had given them an opportunity to show their enthusiasm for him. The whip lasted a long time. A bit later on, they got an electric bludgeon to torture me. At first they used this thing to break my morale as much as to make me suffer physically. They undressed me, shouting the most vulgar insults at me. They put this bludgeon onto the most sensitive parts of my body. Niktab, the swine, was not there yet. But later he came into the torture chamber. He had such a repulsive face that I wondered how he could have sunk into such a state of degradation and vileness... . They put me flat on my stomach on the bench. He took down his trousers, sordidly, in front of his colleagues, and lay down on me. He raped me to humiliate me and break my morale. I was mad with rage but tried to look calm and indifferent so that it would be them, and not

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me, who would feel humiliated and degraded. In this way, I made them aware that their low behavior had not affected me. And really, what importance did it have, what difference was there between that and the whip? They were both means of torture. And both had the same sordid aim—to drag secrets from me. They tied me to the bed again and started to whip me. This time, the pain on the soles of my feet was more acute. I could stand it by my own strength of will and the powers of suggestion, in which I have great faith. Thus I gained a kind of moral strength which gave me the impression that I was no longer being tortured but was merely observing the torture of someone else. However, the whip was concrete reality and the idea was not enough to get me through it. To be able to fix my thoughts I needed an objective reality. The pain of the whip got worse and worse. I called out Ipak, Kayhan, Rohab, Ghassem and the others. These were oppressed, hard working men and women from the village where I used to teach. I could feel their eyes fixed on me. I could feel physically that they really wanted to believe in my loyalty and affection for them. I could see in their eyes their totally justified expectations of me. I do not know how long I lay there, tied to the bench. Perhaps I lost consciousness or fell asleep. When I regained consciousness they started threatening me. ‘You haven’t seen anything yet. We aren’t agents of the Savagh. When you get to them, at Evine, they'll force you to speak. They are terrible. You'll see. We’re going to take you over there tonight.’ ”’

I would like to present a resolution against these barbaric tortures. (See section on resolutions—Ed.) Witness 3: Chile

In September

1973, a military coup

supported by the national

bourgeoisie, assisted and financed by the CIA and multinational

companies, took power in Chile. I was among those imprisoned from the start of the dictatorship until June 1975. Political consciousness in Chile is repressed by prisons, tortures, and threats of death. Right from the beginning of the dictatorship, women and men were arrested, thrown in makeshift detention centers and subjected to the same treatment, the only differences being in the way sexism is used. In the last two and one-half years, the junta has refined its system

of torture,

police has been

imprisonment,

created,

the DINA,

and

assassination.

with unlimited

A

secret

powers.

At

their disposal is a network of secret prisons and concentration camps throughout the country. Political repression in Chile always has two stages for its victims. The first is the secret prison, where the prisoners are massed together and subjected to interrogation and torture. They are kept there for days or months, and

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there are many who never leave. The time spent in the secret prison is the most degrading and brutal period of physical and mental torture. Threats against children are made to put pressure on the prisoners, a method that is used in the extreme against women. Women prisoners are always naked when interrogated, their defenseless bodies being easy targets for blows and sexual aggressions. Sexual aggression is a frequently used weapon against the women, and rape is only one of the manifestations. In Villa Grimaldy, they keep a dog specifically trained for this type of violence against women. There is no rest; night and day the guards and torturers take turns working on the prisoners. There is no escape from this treatment for women who are pregnant. Solitary confinement, beatings, electric shocks are all used. Mind-transforming drugs are also used during interrogations so as to undermine the will of the prisoner and put her at the mercy of the torturers. Many of the pregnant women lose their children; the stronger have their children and keep them in the prisons. They have to suffer the anguish of the uncertainty of their children’s fate inside or outside of prison. In the second stage, they are transferred to the concentration camps or to the ordinary prisons. The only concentration camp where women are allowed is Tres Alamos in Santiago. Since December 1974, they had never been less than 100 living there. The fate of those women held in normal prisons is practically the same. The guards try to turn the ordinary prisoners against the political prisoners through lies and deceit. The political prisoners eventually undergo a farcical trial and afterwards must live condemned by this “justice.”’ Women have been detained as hostages for their husbands, sons, and daughters, or the authorities detain or threaten to detain their children as hostages. The torture suffered by thousands of people is multiplied many times because behind each prisoner we find their family, friends, work mates, and sometimes their political colleagues. Women who take on the task of assisting those in prison, are given a very hard time, with endless hours in waiting rooms and exposure to much verbal abuse. It is often the women outside of prison who keep the prisoners in contact with the outside world and sustain them materially during their time in prison. The women related to political prisoners have organized themselves so as to better help those in prison. Women who perform these tasks also suffer repression, and in many cases, they themselves end up in jail as political prisoners. The wives of political prisoners frequently lose their jobs and consequently suffer great

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economic hardships. In the minds of employers in Chile, it is a stigma to be the wife of a political prisoner. This stigma also affects those who do not work. The ex-political prisoners, those still in prison, and the Chilean resistance movement,

are grateful for the solidarity we have

received from some of the European women’s movements. We want this solidarity to be extended to our sisters imprisoned in Bolivia, Argentina, and Paraguay, who are suffering similar tortures and assassinations by the police in their countries. We ask women to promote campaigns in their countries these crimes against women and their loved ones.

to denounce

Witness 4: India

I have come a very long way to speak to you, and I have waited for this opportunity for a very long time. I have come here to speak about the oppression of women in my country, and in particular those women who have been put behind bars. Women from my country suffer from a triple sexual exploitation. They are exploited by the men in their families, they are discriminated against by the State, and they are sexually victimized by an international system of male complicity. I think that it is very important for sisters here from Europe and America to realize that a lot of the exploitation which happens to women in our country is directly organized and institutionalized by a system of male domination. Another woman and I got involved in politics about five years ago. We were very upset about the condition of our country, about the poverty, about the oppression, and we wanted to do something about that. We got involved in a left movement—the Naxalites—and we tried to organize women into groups. But it was very difficult to bring to them ideas of independence because they had come from such traditional structures. On the other hand, it was very easy for them to relate to a left movement because they were seeing the police brutalizing them continuously, and they came forward very quickly in support of the movement. As a result of our activities, we were arrested. In prison we tried to organize solidarity with the other women prisoners, because we felt that the women prisoners who were there, were also there for political reasons. Although we were consciously political, they were not arrested for any consciously political action, yet it was the system in which all of us were trapped which had landed us all in prison. We organized the resistance, and we found ourselves in direct physical confrontation with the jail

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authorities who were continuously trying to torture us, and continuously trying to prevent us from knowing what was going on within the jails. The political prisoners are the victims of the most vicious tortures, and if they are killed no one will know about it. For example, when a friend of mine was arrested, she was bayonetted, and brutally tortured. She was hanged upside down, hot irons put into her rectum. She was raped. She was placed in solitary confinement, and guarded by two warders. She is still in prison. I want to ask for your solidarity with the movement of women in India, so that the feminist movement proves itself an international force and intervenes in opposition to the exploitation of women.

Witness 5: India

Indira Ghandi has done much to enhance India’s image—an image carefully preserved until the emergency of June 26, 1975. Seeing a woman as a figurehead of the second most populous nation in the world, many people assumed that Indian women are emancipated in relation to their sisters in other Third World countries. Unfortunately, Indira Ghandi has never been representative of more than a tiny elite among Indian women. She and a few other women in prominent positions are far removed from the peasant and working class women who form the bulk of the population. There is also another, more typical, face of Indian womanhood. Eighty percent of Indian women are poor peasants who are the victims of an oppressive, unenlightened, corrupt society; women who are victims of rape, forced into prostitution, driven to dangerous abortions; women who, because of acute poverty, are sold into slavery, women persecuted for marrying outside their caste; and the daily oppressive life of the Harijan (untouchable) women and of minority groups and lower castes. The relationship of the Brahmin (highest caste) to the Harijan is clearly illustrated by the following incident. In a rural area of East Tanjore in 1972 untouchable women could not walk on the same road at the same time as the Brahmin. Through the organization of a women’s movement, untouchable women gained confidence to do this.

The landlords and the Brahmins of the community were enraged by this blatant revolt against all caste rules. As a token of ‘“‘revenge,’’ to set an example, and to maintain their class position, 44 women and children were put in one hut and burned alive (Minority Rights Report). In such oppressive and tragic circumstances,

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it is not surprising that Harijan women are extremely militant when aroused. A campaign for the release of Indian Political Prisoners (CRIPP), which is sponsored by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, has recently produced a 50-page brochure documenting the conditions and treatment of political detainees. Torture is actually commonplace, and varies from cigarette burns on the body to electrical shock treatment on the genitals. The All Bengal Women’s Association reported on the forms of torture and sexual abuses of women prisoners. After arrest and the usual form of police interrogation, often including beatings with hands and rifle butts, suspects are detained in jail. After one month in prison, girls undergo further interrogation. They are stripped naked and made to lie on a table where they are burned with cigarettes on all soft parts of the body, accompanied by all unimaginable humiliations. If they fail to answer questions satisfactorily, an iron ruler is inserted into the rectum.

As a result of

repeated torture, the rectum and the vagina become one. Twenty days later the same treatment is repeated. Amnesty International has documented 88 cases of prison deaths, which is, no doubt, a gross underestimate. It is known that among the dead are many women, although figures, of course, are impossible to obtain. It is clear that only the strongest pressure brought to bear on the Indian Government will have an effect. Let our sisters in India know that we here are with them mentally, if not physically, and that we will not forget them.

Witness 6: Spain

My name is Lidia Falcon and I was imprisoned in Spain by the Franco regime. In the first place I’d like to announce that I don’t make any distinction between the conditions in the Spanish prisons for those arrested for political activities, and those arrested for common

crimes, for 2 reasons—in the first place, because it is

understood that all imprisoned women sion, and in the second

place, because

suffer from sexist represthe conditions

in which

this repression occurs, is much the same for both. In Spain, more than 100 women are imprisoned for political reasons. Some of them exclusively for the offence of assembling for a public demonstration or for organizing. In the last 100 years, during which the Spanish women have suffered the multiple aggressions of which they have always been victims, no other epoch has been so continuously sinister and ferocious as the one we have lived through in these last 37 years. The suppression and

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exploitation of women has been intensified on all levels. We have been humiliated as human beings, as sexual persons, and as laborers. We have been used as brood mares and we have been manipulated as economic tools of the family unit, which is the social base of the new state. The deeply internalized mystification about the physical and psychological inferiority of the female sex, and the irreplacable role of the girl, wife, or mother, has not prevented the exploitation

of cruel police and prison repression of women in our country at the first sign of individual or collective rebellion. The crimes committed against women in the police stations and Spanish prisons can be classified in two main groups: according to the crime

committed,

and

according

to the

special

situations

of

women prior to detention in prison. As far as the offense is concerned, Spanish legislation is very sexist. For instance, a woman who has intercourse even once with a man other than her husband is considered adulterous, while for the man to be found guilty of the same offense, it must be clear that he keeps a concubine at his home or elsewhere. Therefore we find ten times as many women imprisoned for the offense of adultery than men, with sentences of up to 6 years. The illegality of contraception turns approximately 800,000 Spanish women into criminals. According to the official statistics, this number of Spanish women use ovulation-interrupters, without counting the other methods of birth-control which are regarded as unnatural by the Catholic Church, as, for example, coitus interruptus. The illegality of abortion has increased the female population in Spanish prisons by 30%. These women are double victims. First, because of the physical suffering involved in an abortion, and second, because of the punitive law regarding abortion. In the case of other offenses such as abandoning one’s family and children, where the offender may be a man or a woman, it is

the woman who gets the more severe sentence, even though this is not written in the law. Nobody knows where the women’s prisons are even situated in Spain. Nobody remembers that in them accumulate the miseries and pains of hundreds of women who suffer confinement without any economic or moral support, and who are maltreated without any sexist indulgence. Women who enter prison pregnant are obliged to have the child, not being permitted an abortion, whatever their physical or psychological needs. They have to give birth in the most precarious sanitary conditions in the country,

and then return to their cell with a newborn baby of whom are supposed to take the utmost care.

they

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It is generally believed that being confined in prison is the same for men and women. This is absurd. In a masculine world, all the agents of repression are men. Equality has never existed in a male world. Throughout her detention a woman has a man watching her, a man who takes a special interest in her physical needs. In the cells of police stations the toilets consist of a hole in the floor, and the policeman who has a woman in custody will stand near the cubical to look under the door. This woman cannot wash or even use the cold water without a policeman watching her. And torture is performed as systematically in Spain as in the other countries of which my comrades have spoken. In the same way the beatings, rape, and other sexual abuses are repeated in all prisons and police stations. The fight will be long and violent. Until we succeed in taking over the power, men will always suppress and exploit us. Every form of reformism is outmoded. The hour of the suffragettes has gone. It should be clear that this structure, dominated by male power, will not be changed by reformed legislation on abortion, on divorce, on homosexuality, nor by denouncing it. Only the triumph of the feminist revolution will modify the relations between men and women, and build from here on, the new world we all desire.

Witness 7: Greece

My experience, together with that of so many others, began on the first day of the military coup on the 21st of April, 1967, when they knocked on the door of my house for the first time. Fortunately, because a friend had warned me, I had the opportunity to escape. After that I lived underground. The first month after the coup, we began to form an organization with the name E.K.D.A. Unfortunately after the first pamphlets we distributed, they arrested us. I was arrested by the police in August 1967. They took my books, personal things and anything else that they wanted. For the next one and half months I was in complete isolation from other prisoners. Every day for one month I was interrogated day and night. When they did not interrogate me they would put me in the dirtiest and darkest cell, full of dirty water and mice. I will never forget how I was constantly standing up, being afraid to touch anything because the cell was so full of mice. They also involved my mother in this. During the last days of isolation when the interrogations were over, they tantalized me by letting me see my mother for a few minutes. They wanted me

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to sign a statement and they tried to break my morale to get me to do so. They put me in a cell with 20 other women who had had about the same experiences as I had. Eleni Boulgari, Ermans Nahuikian, Evtyhia Manteou, Niki Fountourathaki and Kakia Ioannidou were among them. They were blackmailing us and telling us that we were not political prisoners, but criminal prisoners. A few months later I was tried in a martial court. When I was finally freed I left for Paris. In 1969 I decided to go back

to Greece,

where

about the organizations

I was

abroad

arrested

again

and

interrogated

and my participation in them.

They let me go, but in August 1971 the military police (E.S.A.) arrested me yet again. I was told that if Iwould not speak, I would

not leave the E.S.A. alive. They played a tape on which it was said again and again, ‘‘Moraitou is crazy,” ‘“‘Moraitou is crazy.” They would talk outside my cell, saying that my mother was dead, and they threatened my mother that if I did not speak, she would find me dead. One month later they let me go. By then I suffered amnesia and my left side was paralyzed.

Witness 8: Soviet Union

I am from the U.S., and I would like to speak to you about our sisters who are in prisons in the USSR. I will quote what Rose Styron of Amnesty International has to say about them. “Women in the Soviet Union have been condemned to jails and camps and psychiatric hospitals for their ideas, their religion, the books they read, or for petitioning for national rights and the preservation of a national heritage, for advocating legal reforms, for defending their friends and colleagues, for refusing to denounce their kin.” In prison these women are punished by solitary confinement, reduced rations, and denial of their children’s once-a-year visiting privileges. They suffer from maladies like breast cancer, tuberculosis, paralysis, but do not receive medical treatment. I will now give you a short testimony from Ukranian sisters. She is one of many who appealed to the government of the USSR to allow them to emigrate. Permission was denied. ‘“‘We send you this appeal” they have written, “like a note ina bottle, cast out to sea, not knowing who it will reach.”’ Then one of them wrote, ‘““‘They came to my home. ‘We have come to search you under Code 62,’ they said. ‘What is code 62?’ I asked. No answer. Five of them took me into the bathroom. They took off my clothes. They put their hands into my hair, my ears, my mouth.

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They put them into my vagina, me rectum. ‘What is it you seek?’ I asked. ‘A manuscript,’ they replied.”’ Others wrote of similar experiences.

Witness 9: Northern

Ireland

Two weeks ago a young housewife went into the center of Belfast to pay her rate bill. As she was walking along Royal Avenue an armored car pulled up beside her. Two policemen and four soldiers jumped out and arrested her in the name of Her Majesty the Queen. She was suspected of being attached to the I.R.A. In reality she has never at any time been involved with this organization, but her husband had been interned for two years. She has had to look after her three small children, who are all under the age of 8, by herself. This responsibility, in conjunction with the continual army harassment, has completely wrecked her nerves. She was arrested at 12:45 p.m., and for the next 54 hours she saw no one other than the Special Branch Police. The Special Branch questioned her for hours on end. Then she was put in an underground cell and locked up. She did not know when it was night or day. They took her watch, shoes, chain and cross. Their excuse was that it was for her own safety. The policewoman deliberately dropped the woman’s glasses when she was handing them back to her because she had complained that she could not see without them. She was hardly able to sleep in the cell since they continually woke her up for more questioning. The Special Branch did not inform her husband that she had been arrested until 6 hours after her arrest. But for the fact that a neighbor took her three children into her home, the children would have been left out in the street. The woman’s state of mind on release was terrible to see. She was in acomplete stupor for three days. When someone asked her a question you could see it had not registered in her head. This woman is now afraid to go out of her home in case she is again arrested for nothing.

Witness

10: Switzerland

Up to now, we have been talking about repression in prisons in fascist countries, or countries which are repressive. I want to testify about repression in a so-called democratic country, Switzerland. A trial will take place on March 9 in a small Swiss

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town—a trial brought against the Women’s Liberation Movement. On March 8, 1975, we put up a stall and exhibition in the town. The police tried to stop us. The first thing they did was to try to stop us putting up an exhibition on creches. We condemned the total lack of créches in the town; the town is completely working class; many immigrant women work there, and there are no pro-

visions for their children. The police succeeded in taxing our advertisements and our leaflets. Next they tried to stop us exhibiting and selling other books, which they claimed to be subversive and pornographic. These were books on contraception and abortion, and the struggles of our Vietnamese and Chilean comrades. They withdrew this charge when they saw the extent of the campaign of solidarity and denunciation which we had led in the town. Finally, their latest charge, to which we have to reply on Tuesday, March 9, concerns our papers which they are questioning. We want to publicize as widely as possible the obstacles which are put in the way of women’s freedom of expression in Switzerland. Every other political group in the town has the right to express itself without any problems. I am involved in other political groups working in Spain and Chile, and as a political militant, I have no problems. As a feminist, I bring in books on Chile, Spain or Portugal, or on abortion, and my comrades and I are stopped.

Witness 11: Argentina and Spain We are a group of women of different nationalities living in Munich and working against the torture and suffering of our sisters in patriarchal societies, including our sisters imprisoned in Spain, Chile, Uruguay, and other parts of the world. All the existing organizations are neglecting the particular problems of women, who suffer double injustice and discrimination in prison. Women do not have the rights that men enjoy in Spain and Argentina. In contrast to the men, women cannot have access to newspapers, canteens, and bookshops. In addition to the torture to which men are subjected, women prisoners have to put up with rape and sexual torture. We want to free these women from their isolation and give them a feeling of solidarity so that they can find strength to continue their fight. We have received letters saying that women prisoners have not got the same rights and privileges as male prisoners because of women’s lack of solidarity. Our group raises money and sends parcels to these women. With the help of Amnesty International and other organizations, we are supporting them in their struggle by trying to pay lawyers

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

y es

for them during their trials, and in other ways. We are looking for other groups like ours in order. to co-ordinate our efforts in the most efficient manner possible.

Violence Against Women

in General

While many examples of violence against women have been testified about, there are still gaps. Particularly striking is the lack of a single testimony on child molestation and incest, most of which (need it be said?) involve females as victims and males as aggressors. They remain extremely widespread and neglected crimes. The very last testimony in this section focuses on the tremendously important problem of nuclear waste poisons, and especially their effects on women and children. The dangers of contamination have increasingly been thrust on an uninformed public by a male brotherhood—regardless of the terrible threat to human lives. The following testimonies are about crimes of violence in AusSralia, Italy, and the U.S.A.

Witness 1: Australia

Australian culture is based on the myth of “mateship.”’ Mateship is the word used to describe the bonding between men: that deep spiritual relationship that allows them to exclude women as trivial, as objects of disdain, in the light of the real achievements of men, particularly in the early days when they explored and looted the bush and the great outback, in the two world wars, and in sport. Mateship is the most celebrated national quality, taught and glorified in schools and exported in films. The violence inherent in the mateship ethic has never been hidden. The bushrangers, the soldiers, the footballers, all use violence to put down the other

side. Violence performed by groups of men, or at least sanctioned by the group, is the historical heritage that provides Australian men with their mystical feelings about each other and their feeling of real power. Violence towards women is the means by which they impress upon women the fact that they are forever powerless. Homosexuality is the most despised sexual activity of a man, and homosexuals are bashed and murdered by groups of men. As heterosexualityis mandatory, butwomenarehated, heterosexual intercourse is called “having a naughty,” implying that to have sex with a woman is to stray from the man’s role. A more recent

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term is “to have a nasty,” which relates more strongly the unpleasant feeling about this act, and the wickedness and uncleanness of women. There is no erotic culture in Australia. There has never been any attempt to beautify sexual intercourse. There is only skin-flick pornography which concentrates on women as passive and ugly receptacles for men’s sperm. Women

are, of course, necessary

pursuits and fantasies,

to mind

to free men

the children

for their group

during their long

absences from home, to make excuses to the boss when a hang-

over precludes work, and to prepare the evening meal in perfect timing for the daily return of the man. An Australian man can manage to control his hatred of women in his marriage in most cases, as long as there is no possibility of her usurping his role. On the other hand, many women are bashed by their husbands for imaginary acts of revolt. I have talked to hundreds of women who have been repeatedly assaulted by their husbands. The most common prelude to an act of violence by a husband is that the wife has failed to serve the dinner in the required manner. Along with this goes the accusation of infidelity, so that you often hear women say, “I had to walk along the street with my eyes glued to the ground.” In Australia, rape is a crime against women that puts them ‘“‘in their place.’’ Rape constantly reminds a woman that she is the servicer of men. It divides women by the stigma that they bear for

having been raped. “Pack” rape in Australia is devised by a group of men as an event that they share in common as a celebration of their group identity and power. Pack rape is seen as an honest embodiment of Australian mateship. It is not related to class, as mateship itself cuts across class barriers. Mateship has done much to give Australia the appearance of a classless society. While the sons of wealthy parents, educated at church schools, fantasize together, and then go out and “bring down’”’ a girl they consider to be above herself, the sons of laborers and factory workers comb the streets for girls they term “cases,” girls and women they feel need, or want, to be raped by them. Men who pack rape don’t necessarily belong to the same age group. An older man may rape with a group of younger men to

prove to the other men that he is still virile. A husband may arrange for his mates to rape his wife or he may condone it. There seems to be increasing evidence that this practice is almost like a betrothal custom. A woman will conceal rape where possible, especially from her husband, for whom she feels she must remain

untainted, or he may be provided with the satisfaction of knowing his wife is not pure, and indeed a “‘nasty’’—that is what he wants. Australian women, whether they work or stay at home, are

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isolated from one another. The mateship ethic, which denies them any role of achievement, relegates them to the position of “having no soul.” They must vie among each other for acceptance by men. Australia has an incredibly high rate of fatal kidney diseases in women, due to the abuse of headache powders, self-prescribed, to ease the pain of their lives.

Witness 2: Italy

I belong to a group in Naples called “Le Nemesiache” (the Furies). We have prepared a paper denouncing violence. We include the subtle violence which our Le Nemesiache fights against; the violence which is used against beauty, tenderness, against the nuances of colors and sounds, against the internal rhythms of our lives. Our creativity has been confined, exiled, violated, thrown to one side by abstract rationalizing, by legal organizations, by being beaten down, and by the practice of ridiculing and despising all dimensions which are not considered to be efficient or productive. This is the kind of violence which leads to the taming of, and shame for, one’s own sensitivity and intuition. This is the kind of brutality which right from the cradle forces the female to imitate the male. This is the kind of violence which undermines us, making us insecure and forcing us to imitate men instead of realizing who we are. We don’t believe in legal machinery, because violence from men is not any the less real for being backed up by an organization. There is no way in which any law can restore life or prevent the violence which has already taken place. We denounce the kind of violence which penetrates and shatters our autonomy. We must not forget that men’s violence is supported by the social, legal, economic, historic, sional organizations.

scientific,

bureaucratic

and

profes-

We give testimony of the specific kind of violence we have discovered through self-awareness: the inability to speak out,

paralysis of our bodies, the feelings of insecurity which move us to support fights which are not ours. The crime of being seen merely as a sex object, of always seeing oneself reduced and confined to sex, the violence of seeing ourselves reduced to morons who have no problems because we have used up all our energy and strength for the benefit of others—there lies victimization and desperation. There is also the terrible violence which the whole male cultural organization has used against beauty and which has been adopted by many women too. Beautiful women are associated

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with stupidity and the superfluous. The idea that there is only one right and valid way of examining problems—this kind of violence prevents us from communicating, colors our way of looking at ourselves and others, causing us to undervalue the richest parts of our history and our struggles. Our struggle lies in trying to reduce violence in ourselves, not to let it infiltrate us, or set up barriers within our thoughts, our intuitions. Let’s not set up legal

machinery ourselves. Let’s not elevate professionalism level of a myth. Let’s not support power or insensitivity.

to the

Witness 3: U.S.A.*

I would like to talk here about the power which comes from atomic energy, and which will affect us all in one form or another as soon as the ambitious plans of operators and politicians will be realized. This technology, developed, planned, approved, built and operated by men, can destroy all of us and our living space. However, those who will have to bear the greatest burden are women who are hit during pregnancy by radioactive substances and give birth to deformed, weak-minded, crippled or mentally backward children for whom they cannot expect any help. Statistics from areas influenced by atomic plants in the U.S.A. show that there are hundreds of miscarriages, deformed babies and deaths, as well as leukemia and all other types of cancer in these areas. The men who want to build the atomic reactors and plants at any price, say that atomic energy is not harmful. They say this because those substances which are distributed from the chimneys of reactors into the environment, and from cooling waters into the rivers, cannot be seen, smelled, tasted or touched. Atomic reactors are being built in almost all countries all over the world. Whoever possesses atomic reactors is also able to build an atom bomb. It is not us women’s fault that the world has become what it is today: boundless wealth and power for some, barbaric poverty conditions for others. Contamination, damage, destruction, and annihilation of our environment increases rapidly. But women do not want to take risks to us and our children out of all proportion to what can be gained. Women! Start action groups against the dangers of atomic energy, or join existing groups and enrich those with your imagination and creative initiative. *This testimony was presented by a German

woman.

CHAPTER

13

Sexual Objectification of Women If men were not encouraged by their socialization (we optimistically assume socialization is responsible!) to divorce their sexual response from their feelings of liking, respect and love, that is, if their sexuality were better integrated with their positive feelings, they would be as uninterested as most women are in buying sex from unknown persons. Men also would not be interested in what has come to be known as pornography because it turns men on. Further they would be less interested in rape.

PROSTITUTION No one at the Tribunal offered testimony about young girls and women sold into prostitution by their families or slave traders, though this is still happening in many parts of the world today. The testimony from Japan and Korea indicates that women are forced into prostitution because of the lack of alternative jobs. This horrendous situation is nevertheless a little better than the literal enslavement of women for sex that still flourishes undercover in many places. Of course, the deliberate choice to become a prostitute is an entirely different situation. But the conscious choice to become a prostitute often turns out to be based on a lack of alternative job opportunities or extremely poorly paid ones. In these cases, whether or not prostitution is a genuine choice, is rather questionable. Testimony on prostitution follows from Japan, Korea and the

U.S.A;

Witness 1: Japan

Abolition of state-regulated prostitution and the coming into effect of the Anti-Prostitution Act of 1958 liberated many prostitutes who had been the victims of a centuries-old flesh traffic. Nevertheless, the continued demand of men for slave-like sexual service, combined with the oppressed status of women, allowed an underground prostitution market to survive, and today in Ja175

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pan, the turkish baths are among the most common places where “controlled prostitution” is performed under the guise of the public baths business. I would like to denounce this exploitative system which has survived in spite of our repeated protests. Turkish bath houses usually charge customers between 2,000 and 5,000 Yen ($7-$17) depending on the class of the house. This is only the amount for taking a bath and having your body washed and massaged by a masseuse called ‘‘Miss Turkey.” Of course they are Japanese, not Turkish. These women are not licensed masseuses, but no one cares because the customer’s purpose in going to a Turkish bath is not just to take a bath and be massaged. According to one of the Miss Turkeys with whom I talked, her bath house charged 2500 Yen ($8) per customer, and out of this 2500 Yen, her share is supposed to be one-third—800 Yen ($2.70). But of her 800 Yen she has to pay herself for the soap, towels, and all other utensils she uses for her work. Some refreshment such as cola is served to each customer, often at the expense of the women, depending on the system of the house. I learned that a certain house charged the Miss Turkeys 60 Yen for one bottle of cola when its original price was 30 Yen. They also charged 60 Yen for a rented towel, when the laundry charges only 10 Yen for its rental. Five towels are used for one customer. Not only are these costs laid on the women but the houses also rake off additional profits on other indispensible expenses. One set of gowns and uniforms has to be covered by the Miss Turkey herself. Another payment she has to make every day is 500 Yen ($1.70) to the manager who allots customers. If she doesn’t give this money to the manager, the manager might give her regular customers to her colleagues. After everything, because of these expenditures, not more than 500 Yen ($1.70) is left as pay for their 50 minutes of physical labor. What do you think you can buy with 500 Yen in Japan? A cup of coffee in a typical coffee shop in Tokyo costs 250 or 300 Yen. How can you make your living with this? This is how the masseuses are forced to make money by extra work, that is, prostitution.

A compartment with a closing door is provided for each Miss Turkey, where she can fulfill the requests of her customers. Again Miss Turkey has to pay—4,000 Yen ($13) for the compartment, which amounts to more than her regular income. Then the employers order the women to keep the charges for the prostitution as low as possible so that customers will not move away to rival houses. So, the Miss Turkeys have to take as many custom-

SEXUAL OBJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN

Viet

ers a night as possible to keep up with the excessive payments to the house they belong to. Another means of exploiting the Miss Turkeys is the strict time charge. Even for 5 minutes overtime, the Miss Turkeys themselves have to pay the charge to the bathhouse. I know of a case where the over-time charge snowballed day by day, and in order to wipe out the debt, the woman came to depend on a drug to keep her awake until she totally broke down after a few months. So, Turkish baths in Japan, actually prostitution houses, profit off the sacrifice of women’s slave-like labor. Some of you might wonder why these women do not quit such a hard and unfair job. Nobody, including the Miss Turkeys, wants to do unprofitable work if there are other possiblities. But in Japan, big enterprises use every possible means to discourage women from continuing to work. They try never to employ women over 30, or even in their 20’s. Being forced to quit their jobs at an early age, women in general try to get the position of ‘“‘wife’’ which is regarded as the most respectable position for a woman. Thus, economically dependent women are mass-produced by a system of “‘retirement at marriage,’ and without the total breakdown of this system, we cannot get rid of forced prostitution and exploitation in any profession. Witness 2: Korea

I am reading a testimony which was actually written by my colleague, a Japanese journalist named Matsui Yayori, about the way Japanese men sexually exploit Korean women. She writes: Everyday hundreds and thousands of Japanese men travel to Korea with large wads of money which they use to violate women in our neighboring country. The number of Japanese tourists going to South Korea has doubled yearly since 1965. By 1973 over 80% of the 500,000 foreign tourists to Korea were Japanese. Since the great majority of them were and continue to be men, it is like a giant parade of lechers. At Seoul’s Kimpo Airport, jumbo jets completely filled with Japanese men land in a steady stream. In this way, upwards of two thousand Japanese men a day enter the country. These men have been lured by prestigious Japanese travel agencies who advertise, for example, “Complete Kisaeng service; a man’s paradise.” (Korean prostitutes are referred to as kisaeng.) As a “morale booster,” Japanese companies reward their outstanding branch office managers and salesmen with all-expenses-paid tours of South Korea’s brothels. One or two nights of kisaeng parties are invariably included

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in the schedule, but recently, as a matter of courtesy, an “optional feature” has been actually written into the tour brochures. Chartered tours of two nights and three days cost no more than $200—including the price of sex. “T go to Korea two or three times a year with my co-workers, telling my wife that I’m going to visit Kyushu,” says a taxi driver. “You can’t find a decent geisha in Japan, even at a hot springs resort. South Korea’s much better,” claims the owner of a small factory. “In South Korea the spirit of rendering oneself completely to a man still exists among the women, and their exhaustive service is irresistible,” claims a white-collar worker, his eyes glistening. Many Japanese men fall for stories of kisaeng girls in their colorful native dress waiting on men at parties and even putting food into the customer’s mouth for him. It is advertised that the kisaeng spirit is so self-sacrificing and dedicated that when a man brings a kisaeng girl back to his hotel, she will even do his laundry if he will leave her a big tip. Tales abound of Japanese tourists sallying forth to a kisaeng party in one bus and then returning to their hotel in two buses, each man accompanied by a young woman who has changed into her street clothes. They are truly sex-hungry males, swaggering about without any concern for where they are. There are said to be more than 8,000 of these kisaeng who act as “receptacles for Japanese men’s psychological discharges.” Approximately 2,000 of them are reported to be authorized prostitutes who hold official registration certificates and undergo tests about twice a month to check for venereal disease. The South Korean Minister of Education has decreed that “the sincerity of girls who have contributed with their cunts to their fatherland’s economic development is indeed praiseworthy.” This statement about national pimping has become notorious in the Korean community in Japan. It is even reported that prospective kisaeng must endure lectures by male university professors on the crucial role of tourism in the South Korean economy before they can get their prostitution licenses. If the women

who become kisaeng were to work in a factory, their

salary might not even reach thirty dollars a month. But as kisaeng they receive a larger income for the labor of spending a night in a luxury hotel. South Korea has no social security or public health insurance, so when a working person loses his or her job or becomes ill, the whole family faces the specter of literal starvation. Under these circumstances some women are forced to sell their bodies just to stay alive. An angry reaction against Japanese kisaeng tours has been spreading quietly but steadily inside South Korea. In December 1973, students from Ehwa Women’s University demonstrated against Japanese men arriving on kisaeng tours at Seoul’s Kimpo Airport. They demanded, “Behind the facade of promoting tourism in our country our fellow women are being made into commodities and their precious human rights are being ignored. We can no longer permit

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our sisters’ bodies to be sold to bring in foreign capital. What good will come of corrupting the spirit in order to earn dollars? Many years have passed since our country was liberated from Japanese colonial rule. Why must our women still act as commodities to be sold for filthy Japanese money? We demand an immediate end to brothel tourism which is making our country into a sexual playground for Japanese men.

For a while the Japanese women who opposed kisaeng tours were unsure about what action to take, but the powerful appeals made by Korean women had a galvanizing effect. In December 1973, the “Women’s Group Opposing Kisaeng Tourism” was established in Tokyo. Two days after the demonstration held by the students at Ehwa Women’s University, Japanese women demonstrated at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on Christmas Day. About 50 women—students, housewives, and workers of all ages— confronted the Japanese male tourists leaving on kisaeng tours with leaflets and with slogans painted on their vests, including: “Aren’t you ashamed to go on group brothel tours?” and “Go to hell, sex animals!” Indignantly they also stated: “Previously, Japan colonized and pillaged Korea, raping many of her daughters as army prostitutes. Now they go back to the same land and disgrace her women again, this time with money. The Japanese government, under the name of economic assistance, is actively cooperating with the institution of brothel tours. We must not permit our husbands, lovers, brothers, and associates to go to South Korea to buy women.” Even this small demonstration was suppressed by the Japanese police; but their power could not crush the budding solidarity between women of both countries. The distorted and numb sensitivities of Japanese men can be seen in their relationships with women in general. For most of them the word “women” means only domestic servants who, under the label of wife, are driven relentlessly with housework; or it means prostitutes who, labelled “bar girls” or ‘““massage parlor girls,’ act as instruments to drain off the fluids of the lower male body. Because Japanese men debase their own women as house slaves or prostitutes, Japanese men feel no compunction about raping foreign women with their money.

Witness 3: U.S.A.

I am Margot St. James from the United States. I am a whore. I was labelled a whore in 1962 when I was forcibly arrested. I am obliged to remain a whore for the rest of my life. I have never been

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THE INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL BEGINS

able to get a job since I was so labelled, even though a higher court found me innocent two years later. Streetwalkers in America are the most oppressed women, the most oppressed workers in the country. They are mostly minority women, and they are discriminated against by the hotels and the parlor owners, who I call legalized pimps. The parlor owners take at least 60 to 75% of the money, and give the women no benefits and no job security. Forty-eight thousand women in the United States are arrested every year for prostitution. They are so labelled by the police, by the courts, by the traditional sexist legal system, for providing sex for establishment men. Seventy percent of the women in prison in the United States today were first arrested for prostitution. They learn other ways of earning money faster once they go to jail. They learn how to steal and sometimes they go into drugs. Eighty percent of juveniles—girls under 18 years—who become prostitutes, were first incest victims in their own families. This is something that is never talked about. If we are to do something about the juveniles in prostitution, we must go after the men who buy those girls. In the U.S.A, only the women are arrested. In France, only the women are arrested. Everywhere it is the same. Only the women are put in jail or arrested for prostitution. The enforcement of prostitution laws against women makes the prostitute an object lesson to all women that they had better stay home and they had better live within the roles defined by men. The illegality of prostitution, the laws which are enforced against the women, make the women easy victims for any sadistic man who wants to go and rip her off and brutalize her, or even murder her. Twelve prostitutes were murdered in San Francisco in 1974. That is one a month, but not one of them got a story in the paper. Yet, when one policeman gets shot it is a headline for three days! On Mother’s Day in 1973, I started an organization to combat this blacklabelling process, to combat the divide-and-conquer technique used by men. I called it COYOTE: Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics. Men call prostitution the oldest profession. I call it the oldest injustice. The enforcement against women only promotes the rape ideology. As the woman from Japan pointed out, the women themselves get hardly any of the money. Ninety percent of their income is taxed away informally by anyone who is in a position to know what they do, and that what they do is illegal: the landlord, the hotel manager, the policeman. The problems are the same in whatever country I have been

SEXUAL OBJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN

181

to. They charge you for soliciting even when being a prostitute is not against the law. They arrest your boyfriend or your husband and say he is living on your earnings, which is immoral. Yet many countries, like Germany,

want

to have government-run

houses.

But the government is the worst pimp of all!

PORNOGRAPHY The testimony on pornography from Denmark included a short movie distributed in Denmark showing three men raping a woman. It was so horrifyingly realistic that some women viewers insisted it be stopped after two or three minutes; but even this brief viewing made the point. Pornography has been an issue too long neglected by feminists, many of whom are still swayed by notions of liberal tolerance. Of course, liberals wouldn’t tolerate movies of whites beating Blacks, or Christians beating Jews, but if it is called pornography and women are the victims, then you are a prude to object.

Witness 1: Denmark

On July 1, 1969, pictorial pornography was legalized in Denmark. Prior to this there was a big debate about whether or -not to legalize it. One of the strongest arguments for changing the law was that women would not be raped as much as they had been before. So we should be happy, because men who would like to rape us will go out and buy a porno magazine instead. But itis a big fat lie. With the legalizing of pornography it is also legal to regard women as sex objects, to rape and accost according to need, because pornography ideologically establishes that women’s innermost wish is to subject herself to men. It is a crime against women that some make a profit out of such an ideology. It is violence against women to be exhibited as sex objects and nothing else. So why did our government agree to legalize pornography? Who does it serve other than capitalists? Even before the change in the law they made money by sending magazines and films abroad. Uncensored pornography means even more profit. Who are the women who agree to be photographed for pornography? They are housewives, young women who can’t earn enough money, women students who haven’t enough understanding of what it is to be areal woman, women who do not have

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182

the possibility of becoming economically independent of men. Should we blame these women who have been told their whole lives that they are sex objects, and that this is their most important role in life? This society is organized according to the needs of capitalism and men, and it is a threat to capitalism and male structures if women start to believe in themselves, because then they will start to struggle against every form of economic and ideological oppression. It is quite clear that it is in society’s interest to legalize pornography because pornography helps to deepen woman’s alienation from herself. It alienates her from her own body and her own sexuality. It is a way to strengthen and justify the male ethic that men can direct their potency and aggression towards women, and that women shall passively submit to them. But here in Denmark we are so sexually liberated, or so it is said, that it is considered to be in women’s interests that everything is allowed, pornography too. Let us go back to those who let themselves be photographed. Yes, I am one of them. I believed that I was so liberated that nothing could touch me. Nobody could exploit me. Why did I do it? I had to get a lot of money fast and that was the easiest way. It paid well. But how I felt doing it was something else! I felt it asa violence against my body to be exhibited like a piece of meat, and as a violence against all women. All women suffered because I supported the porno industry. The many women I talked to during my three months as a porno model often hated themselves. But it was very often of bitter necessity that they did it. They had to. Their husbands drank, or they were single mothers. Others felt they had to compete by wearing smarter clothes. For some it was just to be the one time, because they wanted to buy this or that. But for me it was many times. For me too it was almost impossible to get out again. The money is good and for many women it is easy to get into drinking during the photography sessions. Why do the models often hate themselves? Most of the male models think it is ok. But it’s the women who have a prick in their mouth, who have to be tied up, who have to do everything so that a man can get his orgasm, who are exhibited as wet cunts and nothing else. I learned quickly to hate my body and myself for supporting capitalists and their easy money, and for supporting this society’s decay. And I learned too that it is men who have the upper hand in this situation. Who should I accuse because I was a porno model? Yes, I did it

of my own

free will, and the other women I talked to did too.

SEXUAL OBJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN

183

Nevertheless I accuse the government for making a law that supports a capitalistic patriarchal society with its ideology of women as sexual objects and nothing else; that gives life to men’s sexual fantasies; that reduces women to passive objects to be abused, degraded, and used. I say that this is violence against women because now every woman is for sale to the lowest bidder, and for all men. I accuse the government for supporting the porno industry and for continuing to exploit women economically so that women still have very limited possibilities to control their own lives. I believe that only by overthrowing this society will the violence against women cease. And I am prepared to use violence against an ideology that says that women are inferior to men. And I’m prepared to fight against a government and the capitalist economic system which strengthens such an ideology.

a

eae

As the ex-porno model said, not only the models like herself are dehumanized, but so are all women, and young girls as well. Third World girls in particular are used in Denmark for the popular topic of “‘baby-love,”’ the euphemism for collections of photographs of pre-adolescent girls having sexual relations with adult men, or of baby girls with their genitals displayed.

Witness 2: Denmark

The best evidence against pornography is a piece of pornography. We have a film here, and we would like to show it. It is very violent, it is about rape, and it might be uncomfortable particularly for those sisters who have been raped. This film is produced by the Danish porno industry. It is sold in many many shops, not only in Denmark but in Paris, in Amsterdam and in Berlin. It is exported to America and wherever it is wanted. It is also legal to see it in Denmark. (The movie was then shown, but stopped after 2 or 3 minutes.) We have met here today to talk about rape, about violence against women. The question is, how do we combat men’s fantasies about women? In Denmark they have allowed men’s sexist fantasies to flower, and this film is one of the products. It promotes the degradation of a woman. I am sorry it is so upsetting to see to what point male fantasies have come.

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F sAplnammiaps edie The testimonies and reports concluded midmorning on Monday March 8th, International Women’s Day. For the most part however we have followed the order in which crimes were presented at the Tribunal. It seems appropriate to explain here how the Tribunal material was gathered and edited for the book. Everything said through a microphone in the plenary sessions of the Tribunal was tape recorded. To facilitate transcribing, after the Tribunal this was retaped onto smaller tapes. Because of retaping there are occasional losses of brief sections of speeches. All the material was transcribed and then translated into English. When translated, the coherence and articulateness of the unedited proceedings varied enormously. Often when the quality was poor we could not tell whether it was due to the woman speaking or the translator’s interpretation. We must remember that many women testified in a language that was not their mother tongue and that the transcribers often were not transcribing in their mother tongue. There was also tremendous variation in translation skills, and even in the accuracy of typing or the legibility of the handwriting that we had to work from. For these and other reasons, about 10% of the testimony heard at the Tribunal has not been included here, and other testimonies have been edited considerably to include only what is comprehensible. But our editorial eliminations were not just a matter of comprehensibility. Occasionally testimony was superficial, irrelevant or contradictory, and we saw no reason to include it to the detriment of other, more pertinent testimony. Also, in order to maintain the publisher’s length limit and keep the book price within women’s budgets, difficult choices had to be made about what to include in the book. We did not want to limit ourselves to what was heard in the plenary sessions of the Tribunal. We wanted to consider for inclusion all testimony or reports written for the Tribunal but not heard for one reason or another. In a few instances, we have included excerpts from letters sent to the Brussels Office by women from countries where there might otherwise have been very little material. These cases are footnoted. Elimination of repetition or statements not central to the testimony, rearranging of paragraphs, and so on has been done to clarify and shorten where possible, without loss of an important

point. In addition, we have separated proposals made during testimony and placed them in Part Two along with other such material which was presented on Monday afternoon, at the closing session of the Tribunal.

Part Il Solutions, Resolutions, Proposals for Change

CHAPTER 1

Proposals Relating to Particular Crimes Any individual or group was free to make a proposal. Almost all the proposals were applauded, but none were voted on. The country mentioned after each proposal indicates the country from which the woman or women making the proposal, came. In some cases the proposals were formulated by international groups.

A MANIFESTO

FOR OLDER WOMEN, U.S.A.

I want to present a manifesto for older women. We older women wil no longer tolerate our invisibility. We will no longer permit ourselves to be shunted into the corner. We will no longer let ourselves be considered nonpersons who aré just burdens. We have something valuable to offer to the society as a whole, to our families, and to individuals. As older women, we have amassed a lot of experience, acquired a greater perspective. This can be invaluable in raising children, and getting a better historical perspective on the problems we all face, of getting acquainted with our roots and traditions that can give us not only greater insights of how to change our life styles and our society, but give us a greater ability to pursue our aims for a better life with greater vigor and more endurance. We do not, however, aim to impose our ideas on the younger generation of women, but rather see it as an opening of channels of communication both ways, thereby enabling us to learn from each other. Among crimes committed against older women which have to be eliminated are the following: first, isolation. Grown children are too busy with their own lives. Our mates are often either dead or married to younger women. Old friends are scattered. Feelings of rejection and a turning inwards are therefore common. Second, inadequate health care. We demand free health care, including glasses, hearing aids, dentures, etc. The elimination of carelessness and lack of interest on the part of the medical profession to giving adequate care to older women; and the cessation of the biased opposition on the part of the medical profession to 186

PROPOSALS RELATING TO PARTICULAR CRIMES

187

the use of estrogen, a vital part of the female hormones that ceases to be produced by the ovaries and without which the older woman’s health and mental capacity deteriorates rapidly.” Third, media portrayal of the older woman. In contrast to the young woman who is viewed mostly as a sexual object, the older woman is viewed as asexual, the object of pity, as helpless, or domineering and unreasonable. We insist that we are individuals with a great variety of talents and needs, that we want warmth, companionship,

and yes, sexual relationships. Yes, we are alive

and want to be affirmed. Fourth, economics. We want meaningful work with wages, not just volunteer work. Also social security benefits have to be revamped. In the U.S.A., young women raising families (alledgedly the most important job) do not accumulate credits towards Social Security. The claim is that the women will get Social Security as her husband’s dependent. In more and more cases, where women are divorced after many years of marriage, this is no longer true. In the struggle to reestablish herself in the labor market, she can at best count only on low wages. Along with

the many years with zero earnings, this means that her Social Security payments are very low. Fifth, problems of the woman approaching menopause. Women who have dedicated their lives to the welfare of their children find themselves for the first time having to decide what she wants for herself, what she wants from life. At this time when her body is undergoing drastic changes and the children are on their own, the husband often leaves or dies. She has no economic base on which to build a foundation and no emotional base on which to build new relationships. Economic aid should be given

to these women to enable them to get training in the field of their choice and to give them the opportunity to find out what they want. This is only a partial list of the needs of older women. It’s obvious that all women’s fates intertwine. We need each other and in helping one segment, we help all the others.

ABORTION

AND CONTRACEPTION,

MEXICO

Who decided that at the moment of conception, women lost all their rights as a human being to dispose of her most inalienable *Since there is growing evidence of a connection between cancer and taking estrogen some members of the U.S. Committee question whevher opposition is not valid.

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SOLUTIONS, RESOLUTIONS, PROPOSALS FOR CHANGE

property—which is to say her own body? Why should we accept the “macho” idea which stipulates that the woman must accept all pregnancies to which her body falls vicitim? For many women, pregnancy constitutes an outside aggression because it happens against her will. Personally, I have heard women, mothers of eight and ten children, recognize bitterly that their capacity to love cannot satisfy the demands of all, and that undoubtedly some of their children will reproach them for not having been loved enough. As the European women said when demonstrating for the legalization of abortion, ‘““My belly belongs to me!” Concretely my proposition is the following: that women acquire, by means of an international campaign, the ability to exercise the right of control over our own bodies so that we do not have to ask for authorization in order to decide what we will do in case of pregnancy, and that the right of bringing it to term or stopping it shall remain completely ours. We would obtain these rights if we united in a true fight for them. We must stop being manipulated by governmental campaigns orchestrated by men who transform us into passive objects in regard to our creative capacities. It was the policy of the Nazi government that women must have all the children they were able to have in order to supply the State with soldiers. Today, in the Western countries, women are asked to limit their procreation. It is time to ask ourselves this question: for how long will we allow our destiny to remain in the hands of a male-oriented society?

WOMEN

IN POVERTY, U.S.A.

I would like to give some examples of ways that we in the national welfare rights movement in the U.S. have gone about trying to solve some of our basic problems. One of the first things that we did was to list all our problems; for example, too low payments, no jobs available, the processing of applications too slowly, checks getting cut off for no reason. The next step was to analyze the problem, see where we stood with the law, and if the law was bad, we talked about how to try to change the law. We developed a legislative program. If the law was good but just not being enforced, we would take steps to force the department through confrontation to change their regulations. There were a number of different things we did, like welfare hearing campaigns, or credit campaigns where we demanded that credit be provided for welfare recipients. We put pressure on local merchants by going into

PROPOSALS RELATING TO PARTICULAR CRIMES

189

places like Sears and Roebuck and taking foreign currencies (like pesos and pounds, and francs and pennies and nickles and foodstamps) and we’d try to buy clothes for our children with it. This way we would tie up all the lines and the cash registers and they couldn’t sell anything to their other customers; therefore, they had to stop their business, and it was one of the ways we got recognition for our problem of not being able to buy anything on our low grants. We also had something called an eat-in. In the state I come from in the U.S., they allow you 19 cents per person per meal when you’re on welfare, but you can’t buy anything for that small amount.

An eat-in is when

ten or 30 women,

or whatever

the

number, go into a very nice, expensive restaurant and ask the people at the restaurant for their best meal. Then when the time comes to pay for it, you give them 19 cents! . We also have “pee-ins.’”” We women in the United States have to pay to go to the toilet. So what we do is go in and pee on the floor, and then they open up the toilets for free. The Welfare Department has refused to provide cooking stoves for people. So, what we have had are cook-ins. For a cook-in you get an electric hotplate and your pot of beans, or greens, or fish or whatever smells bad. You go down to the public office or the city council and you plug in your electric hot plate and you cook there! And then you might be given a stove. These are just some examples of the kinds of things that a few women with a problem can be creative about and change for themselves.

RAPE, FRANCE We have heard the testimony of rape victims. We must now propose some solutions. I am from a group in Paris, of lawyers, doctors and other women who are working on rape. When a raped woman goes to the police station, she should not be greeted by men who take a malicious pleasure in listening to her evidence. She should not be in the position of being the accused. At the level of the courts, we must have women magistrates for cases of rape because it is apparent that women are still ashamed to describe the acts of which they have been the victims. Yet, they have to do so in great detail, which tortures them and makes them relive the entire experience. But having to do this in front of a man is even more painful. We propose that the jury of the Assize Court be composed of an equal number of men and women because women are more capable of understanding this problem than

COLLECTIVE

SCENES

ePYJIMSOY Suey

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SnisjOg

psepuels

The opening of the International Tribunal

The media men's shortlived

presence

Bolsiu P.

The Coordinating Committee, from left to right, Nicole Van de Ven, Diana Russell, Marguerite Russell, Elizabeth Natland, Lydia Horton, Miriam Bazzanella with Grainne Fanen hidden behind her, Erica Fisher, Moni Van Look (not actually

on the committee) and Lily Boeykens.

Gans Roswith

A Plenary

Session

showing

three

191

of the 5 interpreters

booths

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= cc

©

Budd Nancy

A vote is taken

on the issue of media

men

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